treefrogfurniture

A New Assembly Table

2011-02-06T20:17:00.005-05:00

In March of 2009 Marc and I attended a Greene and Greene woodworking class at William Ng's school of Woodworking in California taught by Darrell Peart, you'll remember this from my post of March 12, 2009. During that class I saw some really nice outfeed tables that the school had constructed on their tablesaws. I liked the look of them quite a bit and the utility was astounding. I've been using a shopmade outfeed table attached to the back of my saw and a separate assembly table, I had the idea to combine the two into one table saving valuable shop space while adding much needed storage space.
I started with the idea of one long 12 inch wide cabinet that runs 6 feet long, in the front I used two 24 inch cabinets and added a 24 inch space with drawers in the middle.

I used 3/4 inch domestic Birch plywood for cabinets and drawers and base frame but used the back face of the plywood because I found it to be more visually appealing once finished. The base frame is 2 inches smaller than the cabinets and has heavy duty levelers at the corners. I edged the cabinets with 3/4 x 1/4 inch strips of walnut left over from a previous project. I secured the cabinets to the base and to the back cabinet and added a 24 inch floor where the drawers will go.

Once the cabinets were leveled I placed a sheet of 3/4 inch plywood cut down to 84 inches on top of them and secured it to the cabinets with screws. This effectively made all the cabinets into one strong unit. On top of the plywood I secured a sheet of MDF covered with melanine. I trimmed this flush to the plywood top with a flush trim bit on my router then edged it with 3/4 x 2 inch walnut glued and brad nailed in place.

I made drawers out of 3/4 inch ply with 1/2 inch bottoms and installed them with full pull out heavy duty slides. I hung the doors for the cabinets using European hinges then cut shelves for them and installed shelf pins to allow for adjustment. I created pulls for the cabinets and drawers using Walnut in the shop and screwed them in place.

The table is finished with Arm-R-Seal inside and out and looks fantastic in the shop. I routed two 3/4 x 3/8 inch slots in the table to allow the miter gauge and crosscut sled to travel beyond the edge of the saw. Other than the added storage the real upside is that I now have 3 extra feet of floor space in my shop and maybe I will stop slamming my hip into the corner of the tablesaw.

"Too often we enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought."

John F. Kennedy

The Rest of the Beginning

2010-09-05T20:46:00.007-04:00

You may remember the front of this cabinet from my post The Beginning from way back in December in which I created the door with a cherry tree motif using a bolection inlay technique which left the branches and blossoms lightly proud of the surface.

I started the rest of the cabinet by designing it using SketchUp, I continued the wood combination from the door, cherry for the sides, walnut for the shelves and the top/bottom, curly maple for the drawer and the back.

The box is joined with finger joints to highlight the contrasting woods, the shelves are let into the sides with dadoes. The back is 1/4 inch birch plywood with curly maple veneer. The drawer is curly maple with a 1 inch hole for a pull.

I used a 1/2 inch quarter round bit on the inside edge of the hinge side of the door then used a 1/4 inch brass rod attached from the top and the bottom as a pivot hinge. I used a cove bit to route a handle into the free side to keep the lines clean and simple. The door rests inside the edge of the top and bottom letting the walnut frame the door.

The finish is as simple as it comes, a few coats of Watco Danish Oil, Natural, followed by a rubbing with paste wax. I installed a french cleat to the back of the cabinet and attached it to the wall that way. I've very happy with the way this came out. I enjoy making Stickley, Limbert, and Greene & Green reproductions but sometimes it's really nice to design something yourself and see it come to life.

It's a job that's never started that takes the longest to finish.
J. R. R. Tolkien

Wow, this was nice.

2010-07-05T22:06:00.003-04:00

I received an email from Megan Fitzpatrick from the Popular Woodworking Editor's blog asking me if she could do a post on my Sam Maloof Inspired rocker and I was floored. I never thought that I would create anything that was worthy of notice from a magazine as good as theirs. Megan called me the following day for an interview and then posted this very nice article the next day. Thanks Megan and all the folks at Popular Woodworking Magazine and website.

"Be true to your work, your word, and your friend." -Henry David Thoreau

Maloof Inspired Rocker, Finale

2010-06-26T22:39:00.009-04:00

Well friends and neighbors, here it is, the complete and finished rocker. After many weekends of work, some re-work, lots of shaping and lots and lots of sanding it's finally finished. Quite a few of you have asked, and yes, it is very comfortable. The seat feels great, the back slats curve just right to support my back, the arm rests are just the right curve to fit, well at least to fit me. Last but not least, it looks great in my living room.

The rockers came out great, and with the chair upside down I was able to run sandpaper along the whole underside creating a smooth gentle curve to rock on. One of my favorite details is the transition from the back legs to the rockers, take a second to enlarge the picture and take a look at it, but pictures don't do it justice, come over and run your fingers along the curves.

The organic shape of this style of rocker is what draws people to it, and it's true, they just can't help but touch it.

I tried very hard to make the arms match and to edge each one with a nice sharp hard line. The smooth transition from the front legs into the arm is something people that have seen it coment on, it really wasn't that difficult thanks to the instruction on the DVD and book.

Shaping the front leg into the seat smoothly was challenging but the joint itself was easy and it fit perfectly with the two matching router bits that Mr. Brock recommends.

The crestrail is the most visible part of the chair and therefore the part I wanted the most srtiking grain on, when I unpacked my walnut the very first day I set this piece aside for the crestrail. I think I made the right choice.

I have commented on Mr. Brock's DVD/Book throughout the process of building this rocking chair only in a positive way, please be assured that I have no connections with Mr. Brock other than a nice Email he sent me after my first blog post. I was given the DVD/Book as a Christmas gift. I found the instruction and plans to be spot on, the templates and jigs described in the book are not overly complicated and very useful, I would not attempt a rocker of this complexity without them. I do have one criticism of the DVD though, there is alot of time spent watching Mr. Brock work with accompaning guitar music, while the music is good, I feel that I would have been better served by voice over description of the process. I do realize that this is Mr. Brock's first DVD and I haven't viewd his DVD on building a Maloof low back dining chair, maybe you won't agree with me, it is after all just my opinion, but yeah, less music, more naration please. Mr. Brock is a professional woodworker and instructor, I could not have even attempted this project without his product, thank you Charles, you helped push this woodworker to a new level.

"Little by little, one travels far." - J.R.R. Tolkien

Maloof Inspired Rocker, Charles Brock Plans, part 7

2010-06-14T15:20:00.004-04:00

Last weekend I started work on one of the most elegant, and probably the most important part of the Maloof inspired rocker, the rockers. This part of the build is a departure from the rest of the chair, it requires some bent lamination. Mr. Brock adds a strip of maple and ebony to his rockers for emphasis, but I decided that I wanted to stick with my total walnut theme.

The book and DVD shows Mr. Brock slicing the laminations of the band saw with jointing the stock in between each cut and cleaning up the cut with a drum sander. I decided to use the thin strip cutting accessory from Rockler, this in combination with my glue line rip blade on my tablesaw makes for easily repeatable strip cutting without having to clean up the stock between each cut and cleaning up the bandsaw on the sander. You may say that the loss of 1/8th of an inch with each cut is unacceptable, but since I'm cutting along the width, not the thickness of the stock this is less of an issue. I marked a triangle on the stock so that I could keep the laminates in order after cutting.

I had previously created the bending form using the template included in the book using the cut off of the curve for a caul. The stock for the rockers is roughed to 1 1/2 inch thick so I made the form out of 2 thicknesses 3/4 inch of MDF attached to a backer board. I covered all the contact surfaces with packing tape to keep the glue from sticking to the form. Using Titebond II glue for the extended open time I coated the top side of all but the top laminate. After laying the laminates in order on the form I used the top caul to pull in the bend at the center, applying pressure with F style clamps. Adding a few clamps lets you work back and forth to bring the laminates into contact with the bending form. The most difficult part is to create the back bend on the end of the rocker, this again is done by pulling the laminates into the form using a series of clamps. I used a deadblow hammer to knock the laminates flat into the form as I went. The set up was left to sit overnight.

Using left over stock from the laminates adder blocks 6 inches long are attached to the rocker after it is removed from the form. This allow the sweeping transition to be created from the leg to the rockers. Using a posterboard template for the curves I rough cut the transition of the legs to the rockers on the bandsaw after aligning the attachment points. I used a round over bit in my small router to shape the outside of each rocker and a smaller round over bit on the inside edges. Once both rockers are roughed out I cut the legs so that they would sit on the transition blocks using the technique Mr. Brock shows in the DVD. After a little trimming and fitting the rockers are attached to the rockers using 1/2 inch oak dowels.

I let the rocker attachment dry for a week, hey I had things to do, I started shaping the rockers and the transitions. Again I used my new favorite carving tool, the microplane, to form the rocker to leg transitions and the shape the taper on the back curves of the rockers. After the microplane I stepped down to rasps and files to smooth out the transitions, following this I started hand sanding starting at 120 grit, progressing to 150, 180, 220, 320, and 400, I followed this with 3M pads, maroon, grey and finally white.
With this, the construction of the rocker is complete! It has been a long road, I started the first weekend in April and here it is, the middle of June, I estimate around 120 hours into this build already, what with remaking the back legs once and the front legs twice and taking my time. I've learned a lot about making chairs and rockers, and more shaping wood. I've watched the DVD over and over and poured through the book. I want to say that I would not have been able to do this if it wasn't for Charles Brock's efforts with his DVD/book and website.

The next and final post will go over finishing the rocker and lessons learned while building it. I'll share with you more of my thoughts on the DVD/book and lots of pics of the finished rocker.

"To practice any art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow. So do it." - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

Maloof Inspired Rocker, Charles Brock Plans 6

2010-05-24T19:18:00.003-04:00

This weekend I got some good shop time since it was raining both days. I was able to get quite a bit done and I have to say that I'm really happy with the way this chair is looking.

I started by using the spindle pattern and marking out 7 spindles for the back of the chair. The good thing is that they are designed so that you can cut them out like nesting spoons, thus saving alot of wood. After bandsawing four from one board and three from another I cleaned up the cut marks on the spindle sander, how appropriate.

Next I took a posterboard cutout of the front profile of the spindles and transfered the marks to both sides of the spindles. I then took the stock back to the bandsaw and again to the spindle sander. Once everything was cleaned up and shaped correctly I marked a centerline on the front and back to aid in shaping and lines on the side to help me maintain the right shape. With a spindle resting on the table I used a roundover bit in my small router to shape the long top taper of the spindle. I then mounted the spindle in the vice and shaped a slight round on the front and a steep round on the back with the microplane, I also shaped a round on the short bottom taper.

After sanding each spindle with 60 grit on my random orbit sander I marked each to length and shaped the bottom with a 1/2 inch tapered dowel cutter and the top with a 3/8th inch tapered dowel cutter both of which Mr. Brock recommends in the DVD. With each spindle shaped and tapered I proceeded to sand them 80, 120, 180, and 220 grits.

With the spindles completed I sanded to headrest up to 220 grit and I sanded the inside of the back legs through 220 grit. After placing the spindles in place I attempted to fit the headrest but had to take it off a couple of times and trim and adjust a few of the spindles. Once everything was adjusted and fitted correctly I was able to screw the headrest in place. At this point I noticed that a couple of the spindles that had cut outs that did not exactly line up, so I marked the cut outs that needed to be adjusted and called it a weekend. Next weekend I plan on cutting the stock for the rockers and laminating them. At this point I cannot wait to start oiling this chair up and seeing the grain come to life.

"We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be."
- Kurt Vonnegut

Maloof Inspired Rocker, Charles Brock Plans 5

2010-05-16T21:40:00.003-04:00

I didn't put up a post last weekend, so today's post will cover two weekends. Last weekend I did complete shaping the arms, fortunately they did end up both being the same shape. That was one of my biggest worries about this build because every time someone sits in the chair they would notice that. I'm sure that there will be many imperfections that no one but me will notice, but if the arms weren't right I feel like everyone would notice.

I had roughed out the shape of the left arm and glued it in place, I used this one as a visual guide to rough out the right arm, once I was happy with the shape I attached the arm in place again with glue and a 3 inch #10 spax screw.

The next day I refined the shape of both arms with the microplane shaping tool, some files and rasps, followed by powersanding. I've found that using the microplanes with the rough blades shapes very quickly, using the fine blades and cutting with the grain smooths the shape by removing some wood, but mostly by removing the cut marks from the rough blades. I then refine some of the transitions and tighter curves with round rasps and 60 grit sandpaper wrapped around a dowel. After this I started with 60 grit discs on the random orbit sander, then 80, 120, 180, 220. If you don't like sanding, do NOT attempt this project, I've turned more wood into dust and shavings that any other project.

The seat is now complete, even the pommel detail with a nice upsweep. With the arms attached and the seat finished I moved on to the headrest for this weekend. Following Mr. Brock's instructions for the headrest I cut it to size and then came up with a shape I liked for the bottom of the headrest. Leaving the top square I marked the positions for the holes I needed to drill for the top of the spindles to go in to.
With the holes drilled and the bottom shaped I then cut a curve into the top of the headrest and drilled into the sides of the backlegs to attach the headrest. After removing the headrest I started shaping the headrest first with the angle grinder and the cutzall blade, then a sanding disc, some touch up with microplane and on to the 60 grit random orbit sander. Once I was happy with the shape I attached the headrest and started shaping the horns on the backlegs and the top of the legs blend in with the headrest. The blending was mostly done with the microplanes, I got it mostly roughed in today, but I have to tell you that all this shaping is manual labor, I sweated through a couple of shirts today. Here it is, next weekend I'm cleaning up the headrest and the horns, finishing sanding on the back legs and hopefully starting on the spindles.

It matters not what someone is born, but what they grow to be.
J. K. Rowling

Maloof Inspired Rocker, Charles Brock Plans 4

2010-05-03T21:24:00.004-04:00

This weekend I got to some of the really fun parts of the Maloof inspired rocker, shaping some of the parts. To start with I refined some of the cuts on the back legs and smoothed the edges on my oscillating spindle sander. I then chocked up a round over bit in my small hand held router and rounded over the edges I could get to on the back legs. I stayed away from the area of the seat, the arm joint and the headrest. Mr. Brock doesn't talk about routing the edges but what I wanted was to ease the edges and leave myself with a guide for shaping the other areas.

Next I screwed the legs in place and using my micro planes rasps I fit the curves in the legs to the seat, careful not to damage the seat, I cut the legs until it was flush with the seat. I also used the New Wave sanding system
to refine the shape.

I laid out the holes for the back spindles in the back of the seat and after removing the legs I drilled the 1/2 inch holes and rounded over the underside and top of the seat. After a little more sanding on the seat I glued the legs in place and screwed the 3 inch screws in place, one of the back screws ended up going right through on of the spindle holes so those with have to be removed after the glue dries and replaced after the spindles are installed.

I started shaping the arms after aligning them and drilling the dowel holes in the arms to attach them to the front legs. I rough cut the shape of one arm on the bandsaw and then started shaping it with the microplanes which are quickly becoming my favorite way to carve things. Now I have to rough cut the mate to match and see if I can carve them both to equal, pleasing, comfortable shapes.

"Of course the game is rigged. Don't let that stop you--if you don't play, you can't win."
- Robert Heinlein

Maloof Inspired Rocker, Charles Brock Plans 3

2010-04-17T22:42:00.005-04:00

Last weekend I went over to my friends shop to use his Harbor Freight lathe, well, it had died. Apparently the motor had given up on its short, dubious quality life. Unfortunately for me I didn't know anyone else locally that has a lathe and I needed to turn the front legs for my rocker, so I did what any woodworker would do, I bought myself one, I mean, I really did need it to complete this project, really. So I went over to The WoodWhisperer's Amazon store because it really is a painless way to support a great site and to keep Marc able to keep supplying us with fantastic videos.

Once the turning was complete, and I was covered it Walnut chips, the front legs looked great in place and the chair is starting to look like a chair. Now onto the back legs, probably the most difficult part of the build so far. After creating the tapering jig that Mr. Brock describes in the book, I tapered the adder blocks on the rear legs to give the proper splay.

Then I cut the tenons on the table saw and rounded the inside corner on the router table. After a little fitting and fine tuning with my small router plane and some paring with a chisel the back legs fit nice and tight with just the right amount of splay.

With both rear legs in place and the front legs on it's really looking like a chair, tomorrow I'll drill some holes to attach the legs. Mr. Brock calls for a Miller stepped bit for the attachments of the front and rear legs, and also the headrest. I have some more cutting to do on the rear legs on the bandsaw and a little more shaping to do on the seat.

You'll notice the Rockler Bench cookies on my table, I've found these perfect for holding the coopered seat for shaping, in the DVD Mr. Brock uses what looks like a cradle custom made to hold the seat, but since I'm just making the one chair making a special jig to hold the seat seemed like overkill to me. I simply place the cookies on the table and set the seat on them, the cookies hold the seat securely when shaping and sanding. Next week, the arms, wish me luck.

"When a man is wrapped up in himself, he makes a pretty small package."
- John Ruskin

Maloof Inspired Rocker, Charles Brock Plans, 2

2010-04-11T20:33:00.005-04:00

This weekend I worked on the seat, the front legs, and the back legs. I also rewatched the DVD yet again, it really is an invaluable tool. The first thing I did was to dust off my biscuit joiner and look all around the shop, I know I had some biscuits around here somewhere. In the DVD Mr. Brock uses Dominoes but he does suggest that you could use biscuits or dowels, they really are just to align the coopered seat. After checking seat for size I used a plane to trim off a few hundreds of an inch off of each of the ends. Once I was happy with everything I measured and marked for the joinery and cut it on the tablesaw. Using the 1/2 inch slotting bit that Mr. Brock recommends I trimmed the tenons for the legs. I trimmed excess material from the seat using the bandsaw then, using plenty of glue, clamped it up.
While the seat was cooking I picked some nicely figured Walnut for the front legs and cut them to size. Mr. Brock's instructions for laying out the mortises for the front legs were very easy to follow. I cut them to size then adjusted the fit with a router plane. Once this was complete I used the provided template to mark the front legs and cut the waste away on the bandsaw.

Once I took the seat out of the clamps the fun started, using an angle grinder and a Galahad carving wheel, I carved out the seat to a shape I liked then refined it with with a sanding wheel, a micro plane, and finally worked my way to 60 grit sandpaper on my Festool sander. I have to say that I never thought much about sanders until I got to use this unit with it's attached vacuum, does a better, cleaner job that any sander I've ever used, I have some DeWalt random orbit sanders that I used to attach to my shopvac, but it doesn't compare. I wanted to see how the seat was going to look so I splashed some mineral spirits on it and WOW!, it is beautiful.

The next thing I did was to select a board for the back legs and rough cut, then trimmed them out on the bandsaw, following this I attached the pattern and cleaned them up on the router table. The instructions call for an adder block to be glued to the inside of each leg, this was the last thing I did this weekend, stay tuned for more updates. Oh a last note, Charles Brock picked up my last post and linked it from his website! Unfortunately somehow my "about me" section had gotten turned off so he had no idea what my name was, and at the end of my post I added a quote from Douglas Adams, but I didn't put quotation marks around it, so, Mr. Brock called me Doug..., well, who really cares, I'm just psyched that he picked up my post.

"Always be wary of any helpful item that weighs less than its operating manual."
Terry Pratchett

Maloof inspired Rocker, Charles Brock plans

2010-04-08T21:49:00.008-04:00

This post begins my journey into the world of sculpted rocking chairs. I've been wanting to attempt one of these for a few years but the passing of Sam Maloof last year and the release of Charles Brock's book/plan/dvd have pushed me to give it a go. I won't give a step by step instruction on what it takes to create one of these beauties such as the example of one of Mr. Brock's chair to the left, this is best left to his book/plan/DVD, instead I'll just keep you up with what I'm doing and how it's going as well as commenting on the Book itself.

I received "Build a Maloof Inspired Rocker" book/dvd/plan bundle for Christmas this year and was struck by the quality of the product, the book is well written and clear, the DVD is professionally produced and Mr. Brock does a great job showing each step in creating the rocker as well as giving helpful hint and tips throughout. The plans are full size 2x4 foot sheets that give you every template that you need to build the rocker. Mr. Brock is quick to tell you that he did not attempt to reproduce an exact replica of the Maloof rocker but was inspired by Mr. Maloof's body of work and wanted to create one himself. His methods are much easier to follow that the Hal Taylor downloadable book which I also have. After my first watching of the DVD I was confident that I could create a passable chair. I suggest that you watch the DVD all the way through and look through the book, then when you are planning your build, use the DVD and book together chapter by chapter.

The first thing that I did was to make a copy of the template plans at Staples just in case I messed up on cutting the templates, I did this also so that I could keep an archival copy of the plans for future builds.

After collecting the appropriate thicknesses of plywood and MDF plus some posterboard I cut out the templates and using artists spray adhesive adhered the paper to the wood and cut it out of the bandsaw then cleaned each up using the oscillating spindle sander and various files and sanding blocks. I also made the bending form for the rockers. The book has detailed instructions on creating each template and form and what thickness plywood to use for which template.

Following Mr. Brock's recommendation for BF I had ordered a stock of 8/4 Black Walnut and it have been acclimating in my shop for 3 months, today I cut, jointed and coopered the seat per his instruction.

I also ordered the router bits that he suggests in the book and DVD for shaping the joints for the leg/seat connection as none of the ones in my collection match in radius, this is the key to getting tight fitting joints on both the front and back legs.

This weekend I plan to rewatch the seat chapter again while following along in the book and then going to the shop to begin the joinery on the seat and start the shaping. More updates to come.

I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.
- Douglas Adams

Limbert #366 Bookcase Finished

2010-03-30T21:23:00.006-04:00

The last couple of weekends I spent most of my time finishing the Limbert bookcase, if you're not familiar with my finishing process check out my post on it here. It takes a few days to complete with drying time in between, so while I was waiting I was working on my Shaker table for The Woodwhisperer Guild March Woodworkers Fighting Cancer build. It was kind of nice having two projects going on at the same time, if I got bored with sanding I could switch over to tapering the legs of the table, if I didn't have much time I could work on the drawer. I decided to go with a medium brown finish for the bookcase so I started with medium brown dye and I used brown Mahogany gel stain for the over stain. I took the time to finish the backing plywood prior to attaching it to the back of the case with 1/2 inch staples to allow for any wood movement.
Once the dark wax was mostly dry I had a friend help me carry it into the house, all that quartersawn white oak is heavy. After letting the wax cure overnight I couldn't wait to set up my vintage Kodak camera collection on the top and fill the bookcase with my woodworking and photography books that have been piled on my dining room table for months. Then I decompressed some of my other bookcases leaving me with a whole empty shelf to expand in to.
I was very happy with the way this project came together, I started with just some pictures and measurements, used Sketchup to make them into a workable plan and went on from there. One detail that I didn't cover in my
previous posts is the bevel on the edge of the adjustable shelves, its a nice little touch that you can see in the pictures or some of the antiques. I created the bevel the same way I did on the top of the Shaker table, I adjusted the angle of my tablesaw to 12.5 degrees and set the fence 1/2 inch away from the blade. Using a tall fence and a magnetic featherboard I carefully moved the shelves vertically past the blade. Cuts like this almost always leave burn marks so a little clean up with a low angle smoothing plane was in order. Every time I make something I learn something new, sometimes something big, sometimes something small, I noticed with this bookcase sitting near my last one that my sanding and finishing have improved. I learned on this one that it is easier to finish a bookcase with the back not attached, a lot easier.

"Happiness is not something ready made. It comes from your own actions."

- His Holiness the Dalai Lama

Limbert #366 Bookcase, Part 2

2010-03-07T22:11:00.005-05:00

Last weekend I cut and routed the dadoes and grooves in the sides of the Limbert #366 bookcase. During the week I took a few hours and, using the template I marked out the cutouts and the bottom lift. After drilling a few access holes and cutting the waste out with a jigsaw I used the template and a 3/4 inch pattern cutting bit to clean up the cuts. I also cut the adjustable shelves to size and added the bevel on the front of each shelf.

Saturday I cut and glued up the top for my cherry Shaker table for the Woodwhisperer Guild Woodworkers Fighting Cancer build, then I moved on to sanding the bookcase. I ran the complete sanding schedule I use for white oak, starting with 60 grit, then 80, 120 and finally 180 grit. Between 120 and 180 grit on the inside of the sides I drilled the shelf pin holes for the adjustable shelves. I don't use a fancy template for this, I have a section of pegboard with two lines of holes 8 inches apart marked every 2 inches. With this I use a 1/4 inch brad point drill bit with a stop collar in place to drill 1/2 inch deep holes. I've used this on many projects and have never had problems with it, its simple, its cheap and I can make custom templates for any project.

The final dryfit was done after hand fitting each part, a few clamps were used to hold everything together and tight while I took measurements to insure that everything was square. I took the rest of the afternoon to make a taper cutting jig for the tablesaw inspired by Marc's live Guild event as I would need to cut long tapers for the Shaker table.
Today I had to run to Lowes to get some oak ply for the back of the bookcase, all of the pictures of the original that I could find show a plywood back so why not? I gathered my long clamps and glue bottle and completed the glueup. After a couple of hours of drying I flipped the bookcase onto its face and measured for the plywood back. After cutting and sanding the plywood I placed it and attached it with some blue tape for the pictures leaving it unattached to make finishing easier.

I took the rest of the day to cut the mortises in the Shaker table and taper the legs. Also I took the top for the table out of the clamps and rough sanded it.

One of the features that attracted me to this particular bookcase is the detail on top of the piece. The small fixed shelf and the cutouts along with the solid wood back and the large fixed top shelf are very nice and would make a perfect place for me to keep part of my vintage Kodak camera collection. I can't wait to complete the finish and get this bookcase in the house.

"Take everything you like seriously, except yourselves."

Rudyard Kipling

Limbert #366 Bookcase

2010-02-28T21:09:00.004-05:00

When I started my journey into Arts and Crafts furniture I was of course drawn to Stickley's designs, his being the most common in the literature. As I got further along I discovered Charles Limbert and his unique take on furniture. Limbert was a student of European designers, particularly Charles Rennie Mackintosh of the Glasgow school, his designs are noted by cutouts and curves. I've made many Limbert pieces and blogged about them here. I found this bookcase in a reprint of an early 1900's Limbert catalog and searched online auction catalogs until I found this one.

Limbert produced this model with and without a door, and in a double wide version. The single door version fits the size that I want, its 64 inches tall, 12 inches deep and 30 inches wide. I'm not sure if I will add the door or not, but for now I'm proceeding with the assumption that I won't have a door. I took the photo into Google Sketchup and with the know dimensions produced a plan that I've uploaded in The Wood Whisperer Community.

From this model I produced a cutlist and exploded details of the parts. Saturday was spent preparing the Quartersawn White Oak stock and gluing up the parts, I also created a template for the rectangular cutouts at the top of the bookcase and the small lift at the bottom. Sunday I took everything out of the clamps and cleaned off the boards. I trimmed each piece down to the correct size and cut the 3/8th inch dado along the back of the sides and on the top and bottom shelves. Using a T-square guide and a plunge router I cut the dadoes for the top and bottom shelves and for the small shelf. I switched to the router guide and a 3/8th inch bit and cut the mortises for the top and bottom aprons. After squaring up the end of the small shelf dado with a chisel I cut the tenons on the aprons using the dado blade still in the tablesaw.

After doing a little fitting of the pieces with a routerplane and chisel I was able to complete an initial dryfit before calling it a day. I wanted to get a good start on this build because starting next weekend I'll be beginning the Guild March Shaker table project as part of Woodworker's fighting cancer. I'll be recording my progress of the Shaker table and continuing on with this project so look for updates.

"First things first, but not neccessarily in that order." - Dr. Who

The Beginning

2009-12-28T19:36:00.004-05:00

I know that I can make a nice wall cabinet, the challenge with this project was the inlay that I had thought of for the door. That being said, I decided to start with what for me is usually the end, the door. This is going to be a stand alone wall cabinet to replace a smaller one in my bedroom, it's made from Cherry and I wanted to incorporate a bolection inlay of a Japanese Cherry tree on the door. I've never done a bolection inlay before and wasn't sure if I could pull it off well enough so I wanted to complete the inlay first to leave me multiple options with the design if I couldn't pull it off.

I started by selecting an interesting grain pattern and cutting it to size of the planned door. I wanted the underlying grain to mimic the mountains that you would see in the background of a Japanese print.

With the grain pattern set I sketched out a Cherry tree on large graph paper, at this point I had in my mind how I was going to do the wood of the tree but I still wasn't sure about the blossoms. I cut the sketch of the trunk into smaller components and using spray adhesive I attached them to pieces of 3/16 inch thick walnut aligning the grain in pleasing ways. After cutting out all the pieces on the scroll saw I used double sided tape to hole the walnut to the door and outlined them with a sharp Exacto knife. Working with one component at time I then routed a 1/16th inch deep relief into the door. After fitting the piece I then would move on to the next piece, completing the tree in a few days between finishing up Christmas projects. I still had in my mind that I would cut the blossoms and without routing glue them to the door and shape them with my Foredom power carver. I tried this method as a test and was very disappointed. The small blossoms were very hard to cut on the scroll saw and attempting to shape them scarred up the base wood. I gave up on this approach.

As often happens I had an epiphany in the shower, I'd go abstract and simple. After I dried off and dressed I went out into the shop and using a 3/8th inch plug cutter I cut a scrap of curly maple into plugs. I drilled some 3/8th inch holes into some scrap cherry and drove the plugs in. I trimmed the plugs with a chisel and shaped them with a sanding block. I noticed that there was a slight space around the plugs and that all of one size would look odd, so I undersized the drill bit by 1/64th of an inch and tried that. The plugs fit very tight and after trimming and shaping there was no space around the plug. I then moved to the drill press and cut 3/8th and 1/4 inch plugs from a block of curly maple. I started placing holes where they looked good and plugging them, I kept adding them here and there until I was happy. After trimming them and sanding the plugs and the trunk I decided that the project was a success and the wall cabinet could proceed with this design. More to come as the cabinet takes shape.

"The beginning is the most important part of the work." - Plato

Limbert #234 Tabourette, Part 2

2009-11-11T18:14:00.004-05:00

Well here it is, the Limbert #234 Tabourette completed. The build was very easy with no complicated joinery. Download the Sketchup plan here, make some simple patterns and go for it.
The finish is a little different from my previous posts, on this table I decided to skip the shellac for the final layers and go with Arm-r-seal from General Finishes. The result is really nice and has a more satin finish than the shellac, I still topped it all off with Watco dark liquid wax as usual.

The top is attached to the base with figure 8 table irons to allow for any movement and I aplied felt pads to the feet as it going to live on a hardwood floor.

My neighbor was very happy with the final result and is looking forward to the coffee table that I designed to go along with it, more on that in a series of later posts.

"No matter where you go, there you are" Buckaroo Bonzia

Limbert #234 Tabourette, Part 1

2009-10-30T16:39:00.009-04:00

My neighbor asked me to make her an end table and a coffee table in the arts and crafts style to go in her bungalow. I showed her some of the completed pieces in my house and she was drawn more to the Limbert style. I did some more research in my books and online and came up with this little tabourette as an end table, I showed her the pictures and described my idea for a coffee table that would compliment the design of the end table. Coffee tables weren't a part of American homes in the 1900's but I took a Limbert cocktail table and lowered it and changed it some to make it a coffee table, more on that in a later post.

In previous posts I have described my method of scaling plans from pictures but luckily I was able to find descriptions of this table along with dimensions, which are 16"x16"x18" tall. These relate to the widest measurements, the top which will be square. From this and the photos I came up with the dimensions in the picture at the left.

Using Google Sketchup I created a model of the table along with dimensioned elevations, I was also able to look at the components and come up with construction details such as how to connect the sides.

After removing the stock from the clamps and trimming it to size I took this template I made up from the plan above and marked out the areas to be cut out. After removing the bulk of the waste with a jigsaw for the cut outs and the bandsaw for the bottom I carefully aligned the template to the inside of each side piece and screwed it in place. Using a template like this for routing is always good, you can attach it with double sided tape or if piece has a hidden side you can just screw the template to the stock. I used a 1/2 inch pattern cutting bit in the router table to give the cutouts the proper radius at the corners. After this I cut a 45 degree miter on each side of the side pieces.

What followed was some sanding and a little hand work on the cutouts then I glued the miters together using the miter cutoffs as glue blocks a little time cooking in the clamps while I sanded the top. A final sanding on everything inside and out and attaching the top with figure 8 table irons, a little more touch up sanding and a cleaning finished up this project for the weekend and now all that is left if finishing. My neighbor looked at the finish samples that I keep and picked the middle range of the five I have so when I start on the finish I just turn over the sample and the "recipe" is written on the back. For more on my arts and crafts finish and a look at the samples see this post.

" Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don't matter, and those that matter don't mind." Dr. Seuss

Music Stand part 3

2009-10-24T22:31:00.009-04:00

This weekend I started out by sanding all the flat surfaces of the mahogany ribs and then taking to the edges and curves off everything with a folded piece of sandpaper . There are no pictures of this because I don't like getting dust all over my camera. Once I started to assemble the music stand I didn't think that I would need to clamp the ribs into the stand because the fit was tight enough that the last they took a gentle rap with a deadblow hammer to drive each one that final smidge, but I decided to err on the safe side and clamped each rib in place just in case the glue would piston one of the ribs out as it set up.

After a little more hand sanding and the first two coats of Watco Natural Danish Oil I decided to take the stand out onto the lawn for a better shot. I think it turned out great so far, with many more coats of Danish Oil and a coat of wax this stand will glow.

“Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.” ~Dr. Seuss

Music Stand part 2

2009-10-20T22:24:00.005-04:00

Having left the back leg on the bending form all week, Saturday morning saw it unclamped and removed from the form. From the side view here you can start to get an idea of what the stand will look like when finished. After trimming the back leg to match the width of the front legs I glues the two sets together and let them sit while I prepped the Mahogany for the cross ribs by resawing stock to 3/8th inch thick and running them through the drum sander to clean off the saw marks.

Once the clamps were removed I trimmed the legs flat by setting the stand on the assembly table and using a block of MDF for a gauge marked a line on each side then trimmed the feet with a handsaw. I then cleaned up the edges with a block plane and a smoothing plane and finally some sandpaper. I used a small router and a 1/4 inch round over bit to ease the edges, where I couldn't get the router I used a strip of 80 grit sandpaper and rounded the edge.

I made a gauge block out of a strip of MDF and a small piece of 1/4 inch plywood so that I could cut a groove across the stand at 2 inch intervals using a dado blade set at 3/4 inch deep. In these grooves will fit 5 Mahogany ribs that will hold the sheet music.

This is the only picture I took of the glued up stand but if you look closely you can tell that there is a taper. Before gluing the back leg to the front I used the jointer to run a 3/8th inch taper along the length where it contacted the front legs. When I dryfitted the legs I wasn't happy with the bulky look of the top of the stand so I decided to add the taper and if I cut if off the back of the back leg the laminates would have been visible, so I cut it from the inside of the back leg, it turned out great and in the final post I'll take more detailed shots of it.

I made two routing templates to cut the inside and outside curves for the ribs. Here you can see the inside curve template, a blank, and a blank with the inside curve rough cut. I ran the "downhill" cut on the router table and then flipped the blank to avoid tear out from the flush trim bit. After running all the ribs I marked out for the cuts that will fit around the stand. Working without a plan and just a rough sketch if freeing in a way as you can make changes along the way. Next weekend will see the ribs completed and sanded and assembled to the stand, then a nice oil finish will make this wood glow. I hope that the finished product lives up to my vision.

"Happiness lies in the joy of achievement and the thrill of creative effort." Franklin D. Roosevelt

Music Stand part 1

2009-10-16T22:04:00.007-04:00

My newest project is something different for me, I'm making a music stand for a present. It involves bending wood to quite an acute degree, tighter than I've ever done before. After consulting with my friends in The Woodwhisperer chatroom I decided to stick with a technique I'm familiar with, bent lamination. The first thing that i had to do was to create a bending form, I cut a piece of 1/2 inch MDF to 24x12 inches, I used my beam compass and drew a 12 inch radius arc in one end. I rough cut it on the bandsaw and cleaned up the cut using my disc sander and finished it with a flexible sanding strip made from a strip of 1/8th inch thick Baltic birch plywood with a block of wood glued to each end for handles and 80 grit sandpaper glued to it with spray on adhesive. Once the template was true, I marked out three more blanks and rough cut them on the band saw. I glued each blank onto the template using small brads to lock them flush. I clamped the sandwich together and let it sit for a few hours.

After lunch I removed the clamps and used a flush trim bit on the router table to flush up the arc. I then marked a line 1 1/2 inch

along the top and drilled 1 inch holes every few inches to make clamping easier. I applied packing tape to the top to keep any glue from sticking to the form.

The legs of the stand are made from Curly Maple, I ripped 2 pieces 2 inches wide by 50 inches long and using the band saw I resawed it into 3, 5/16th inch thick pieces. To clean up the saw marks I ran each piece through the drum sander to a final thickness of 1/4 inch.

Next comes the hard part, gluing and clamping the laminates to the form. The open time on the glue is limited and there are many clamps that have to be tightened. After covering each layer in glue with a roller I taped them together to keep the laminates from slipping. Starting at the center of the arc I clamped the laminate sandwich to the form tight as possible. I alternated each side of the center to even out the pressure working the clamps as tight as you can and moving to the next, you won't always be able to tighten the clamp completely until you get some leverage from the next clamp in line. To get the last clap in place I had to resort to a long clamp to help lever it in place. You might think that you could start clamping at the top end of the arc and use the long straight end to pull the laminate to the form. You can't do this because the laminates must slip along each other to form to the contour or the arc, by starting in the center of the arc you allow the wood to move equally on each end of the laminate sandwich.

Once the glue has set overnight I removed the clamps and got only about an inch of spring back. I repeated the process of gluing and clamping for the second set of laminates. I scraped the excess glue off of one side and using a number 4 plane, block plane, and finally a low angle finishing plane flattened it. Starting with the arc sitting on the tablesaw table and held to the fence using a featherboard I ripped it down to 2, 3/4 inch thick legs. These are glued back to back to form a Y that makes up the front 2 legs. The second piece will be ripped to 1 1/2 inch wide for the back leg and glued to the front Y to form a tripod, more pictures in the next post will illustrate it better.

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." - Douglas Adams

A Picture in Wood

2009-07-14T21:41:00.010-04:00

The weekend before last I took this picture at a park near my house late in the day when the Dragonflies were having a great time buzzing around and doing what Dragonflies do. This one landed on this leaf long enough for me to get a few snaps of him.

This weekend I printed out a copy of the picture and turned it into an inlay. I used walnut and cherry for the plant. On the dragonfly I used quartersawn mahogany for the darker wings and plainsawn mahogany for the lighter wings in an attempt to give it some depth. The abdomen is zebrawood and the legs and eyes are wenge. The background is curly maple with nice dark streaks in it, and a neat curve from a branch.

After the glue dried I smoothed the inlay with a bevel up smoothing plane followed by a card scraper, I then glued it to a 1/4 inch Baltic plywood substrate. This piece will eventually find its way to the top of a jewelry box, but for now, its just a picture in wood.

All things are difficult before they are easy. - Dr. Thomas Fuller

Dragonfly Inlayed Jewelrybox

2009-07-04T21:31:00.002-04:00

This is my second inlaid jewelry box and like the first one it is also a gift. The box is made from one board of Bolivian Rosewood planed to 5/8 inches thick. I cut the miters so that the grain would appear to wrap around the box.

The background for the image is curly maple with an interesting knot feature and some dark streaks. The wings are quartersawn mahogany with ebony tips. The main body is wenge and the tail is zebra wood. The eyes are padauk outlined by ebony and the legs are ebony. The branch is walnut, click on the image and view it larger to get a better idea of the inlay. The inlay is attached to 1/4 inch thick Baltic birch plywood, the bottom is also Baltic birch plywood.

After sanding I cut the top off on the tablesaw leaving a very thin piece of wood to be removed with a handsaw. I cleaned up the remaining wood with a block plane and some sanding. One this box I used a couple of 10mm barrel hinges, they worked out better than the hinges I used on the previous one. The box is finished with multiple coats of Danish Oil followed by two coats or paste wax, the inside is top and bottom is covered with wine colored flocking.

This is the first small box that I am completely happy with the way it turned out. As with anything, practice makes better, not perfect, but still better.

What matters is the value we've created in our lives, the people we've made happy & how much we've grown as people. ~D. Ikeda

More Fun with My Camera

2009-06-20T20:44:00.012-04:00

The image on the left has been photoshopped to produce a High Dynamic Range Photo, the image on the right is the original photo.

The same process was applied to these two photos. I really like the way HDR brings out the detail of the rust around the antenna and in the lights. I also love the way it brings out the streaks in the paint and the dirt that is barely visible on the original.
If you are interested in the technique you can find out more about it here.

"In a gentle way, you can shake the world." ~Mahatma Gandhi

Some Fun with my Camera

2009-06-09T21:48:00.002-04:00

Happiness lies in the joy of achievement and the thrill of creative effort. Franklin D. Roosevelt

Tetanus, what you don't see can hurt you

2009-05-04T21:12:00.002-04:00

Much of our attention during safety week is focused on preventing injuries, but sometimes no matter how careful you are, accidents do happen. When these things happen one of the most important things you can do, appart from not bleeding on your project, is to avoid a serious infection from the wound. Your wound should be cleaned and properly dressed, and if you seek medical attention one of the first things they will ask you is, "have you had a recent Tetanus booster".

The bacteria that cause tetanus, Clostridium tetani, are found in soil, dust and animal feces. When they enter a deep flesh wound, spores of the bacteria may produce a powerful toxin, tetanospasmin, which acts on various areas of your nervous system. The effect of the toxin on your nerves can cause muscle stiffness and spasms — the major signs of tetanus. The time between infection and the first sign of symptoms is 5 days to 15 weeks, with 7 days as the average. Most cases of tetanus in the United States occur in those who have not been properly vaccinated against the disease.

The most frequent symptom is a stiff jaw, caused by spasm of the muscle that closes the mouth, accounting for the disease's familiar name "lockjaw." Muscle stiffness all over the body may follow. An infected person may also have other symptoms: difficulty swallowing, restlessness and irritability, stiff neck, arms or legs, fever, headache, and sore throat. As the disease progresses, the victim may develop a fixed smile and raised eyebrows due to facial muscle spasms. Spasms of the diaphragm and the muscles between the ribs may interfere with breathing, often requiring mechanical ventilation. The abdominal or back muscles may become rigid.
Wounds on the head or face seem to be more dangerous than those on other parts of the body. If the person survives the acute illness, recovery is generally complete.

This disease is easilly avoided with a common vaccine, which is virtually 100 percent effective in preventing tetanus. Adults that have recieved the initial vaccine in childhood shoul recieve a booster shot every 10 years or if the injury has occurred more than 5 years after the last booster.

So do what you can and get a booster vaccine every ten years, and if you do cut your finger off, remember to put it in a plastic bag and then put in ice and take it with you, perhaps they can reattach it, or if not, its really good to gross out everyone in the ER waiting room.

Limbert Tables in SketchUp

2009-05-02T22:33:00.003-04:00

I received a couple of emails and comments on scaling the images to create templates for the two Limbert tables I recently posted as SketchUp plans. The first step is to click on each of the pictures to get the larger view, save these to your computer and print them as large as you can. You will notice that the drawing is on a grid, this grid is 1x1 inch. Take a piece of poster board and draw a 1x1 inch grid on it, you can buy poster board with a ghost grid 1/2 x 1/2 inch printed already. Next scale the drawing by transferring the corner points and some guide points for the curve onto the poster board. Connect the dots and you have an outline of the side of the table you want to create as a template. Cut it out and trace it onto a piece of plywood or MDF, cut the template out on a bandsaw and clean up the lines and you have a perfect template to use to create the sides of either or both tables. I hope that this helps.

"The only real failure in life is not to be true to the best one knows." ~Buddha

Limbert #244 Fern Stand plan

2009-04-29T15:28:00.003-04:00

I previously describe making this table in a series of posts starting with http://treefrogfurniture.blogspot.com/2008/08/limbert-fern-stand.html. I had made my own plans from pictures of the antique original and dimensions taken from the original catalogs and antique auction sites.

Playing with Google Sketchup lately I decided to create a plan for this fun little table in case anyone wanted to make one.

http://woo dwhispererforum.com/gallery/data/506/Limbert_244_Table.skp

"Happiness lies in the joy of achievement and the thrill of creative effort."- Franklin D. Roosevelt

Limbert #240 Lamp Table part 2

2009-04-23T13:54:00.005-04:00

While I am a huge fan of Robert Lang's Shop Drawings series of books I have found that there can be differences in his shop drawings and some photos of the antiques that I find on the Internet. These differences may well be design or process changes between runs of the furniture. As an avid searcher for pictures of details or original Arts and Crafts furniture I often find details that I prefer better than the one described in Mr. Lang's books. One of these differences is the top cross piece on this table. To your left is a photo I found of an original Limbert #240 Lamp Table, notice the cross braces holding on the top. In Mr. Lang's More Shop Drawings for Craftsman Furniture he calls for four small corbels that match the end of these cross braces. While certainly adequate to hold the top in place I found when I previously built this piece a few years ago that I was less than happy with the final result. I found this picture on EBay where it was listed as an original and indeed had the original stamp of Limbert. Most pictures I've found on antique auction sites show the table from the front and top not showing any of the details. While this may be great for selling the piece it isn't as satisfying for a woodworker that wants to turn it over and see how its made. That is what makes this on of my favorite pictures, apart for the beautiful antique sitting on gravel and leaning on a concrete curb, yikes!
As a result I measured out and made these cross braces for my version of the table. The ends match the curve drawn out by Mr. Lang. I cut 2 pieces of 7/8 inch thick stock 2 inches wide and 18 inches long. After cutting a halflap joint in both pieces I transferred the template of the curve to the wood and cut it out on the bandsaw, I cleaned it up on the oscillating spindle sander and by hand. I then went to the dryfit of the sides and measured the exact distance across the top where the braces will sit. I then transferred the angle of the sides to the stock and cut out the dado on the tablesaw by adjusting the miter gauge, in this case 3 degrees, and sneaking up on the lines then nibbling away at the dado while checking fit with a scrap block. After making all the cuts I could at this angle I moved the miter gauge to the other side of zero to 3 degrees and repeated on the other dados. I tested the fit on the dryfit sides. To my great surprise everything fit and lined up, with just a few light taps with a deadblow the cross braces locked into place on the top of the table.

I cut the tabletop to 20 inches square and marked out 3 inch radius rounds on the corners. I cut the corners on the bandsaw and cleaned it up on the disc sander. Taking everything apart I sanded all the parts to 150 grit and left it for the weekend.

This week while stuck in a hotel overnight for work I pulled up Sketchup and decided to give drawing this table a shot. I have been working on learning Sketchup but it has been a slow process, one reason is that I don't work on it very often, the other is that I'm working on my laptop and had not been using a mouse. I picked up a wireless wheel mouse as recommended to me by many Sketchup guru's and success. Here is a model of this table that I have posted on The WoodWhisperer forum. I did this from memory not having the book with me but after making the jigs, templates and pieces I was very familiar with the measurements. I would suggest using the model to see how it goes together and not for the exact measurements, for that pick up Robert Lang's book More Shop Drawings for Craftsman Furniture.

The project is sitting on my assembly table waiting to be glued up this week and start the finishing process this weekend. This is a really fun project, and while there are no tenons or ebony plugs its beautiful in its lines and curves. Use the sketchup model to take it apart and see how everything goes together, you can learn a lot about how to make a piece by doing this. I'll still do my designing with paper and pencil as it is faster for me and I can let my ideas flow and work them out in my head, but for complicated designs like this one I'll virtually build it and refine it on the computer. Besides, it gives me something to do when stuck out of town in a hotel.

"Happiness lies in the joy of achievement and the thrill of creative effort." - Franklin D. Roosevelt

Limbert #240 Lamp Table part 1

2009-04-12T20:30:00.007-04:00

This weekend I started a reproduction of a Charles Limbert design #240 Lamp Table, the original was produced circa 1903. Unlike Gustav Stickley, Limbert was not concerned with humble simplicity of design, his furniture borrows heavily from the prairie style of Frank Lloyd Wright and the designs of Charles Renee MacKintosh.

I really like Limbert's designs, I've made one of his large tables, the Double Oval Table, and two of his smaller tables, the #244, and the #238. I previously made this table for a friend, but I have always wanted to have one for myself and luckily, I had just enough quartersawn white oak to complete this table. When I was done with the rough cuts I only had 2 feet of 4/4 quartersawn white oak left.

The plan for this project came out of Robert Lang's More Shop Drawings for Craftsman Furniture , these books are a great resource for anyone interested in making authentic Arts and Crafts style furniture. Robert includes a drawing of the sides with their irregular shapes in a grid that can be reproduced by creating a 1 inch by 1 inch grid on a sheet of posterboard and transferring the drawing to that. I used this posterboard pattern to create a template out of plywood for both the sides and the shelf.

Taking the panels out of the clamps this morning and scraping off the excess glue the first thing I did was to trace the patterns onto the panels. I then cut proud of the line on the bandsaw for both the shelf and the side panels.

I attched the pattern to the cut our of the shelf using a couple of screws making sure to attach it to the underside of the shelf. This lets me pattern route it on the router table without worrying about the pattern slipping as can happen using double sided tape.

I make sure to label all my templates, jigs, and patterns with not only the name, but any directions and dimensions for the project. The sides call for a taper on both sides and a bevel cut at just under 45 degrees. The trick to this, which Mr. Lang does not describe in his book, is to create two jigs to enable you to easily repeat the cuts on the table saw.

I created these jigs using the template for the side. For the first jig I placed the template top up on the plywood and aligned the right side with the edge. I then attached blocks to hold the stock in place around the template. I adjusted the fence so that the bevel cut would be at the correct location and ran the stock through for all four sides. I labeled the jig with the name and the stock dimensions as well as the settings for the blade angle and the fence.

The second jig is made by placing the top of the template to the other end and aligning the edge of the template with the edge of the plywood. Again attaching blocks to hold the stock in place. Adjusting the fence so the the width of the bottom of the side is 15 inches, I run the stock through, and repeated for the other sides. I labeled this jig just as I did the first one. When I was done I trimmed off the excess plywood at the bottom of both jigs to make future cuts easier.
With the cuts complete I traced the cutouts on the stock and using the bandsaw roughed them out. They will be finished on the router table like the shelf.

When routing a template make sure that you use a starter pin to keep from getting kickback when the stock comes in contact with the spinning bit. When possible router with the grain and not against it. If that is not possible, try to sneak up on the cuts against the grain and not cut into it all at once.

One trick I use if I have to cut against the grain is to take little bites out of the stock with the bit to create breaks so that the spinning bit will not cause too much tearout. I still find that I am left with tearout, but its contained and rather than ruin the piece I'm left with a small defect that can be cleaned up using a spokeshave and some sandpaper.

With the sides beveled and shaped I like to do my first dryfit before I get too far into sanding and trimming in case I need to make any changes. Luckily everything fit nicely.

I used a Ryoba saw and a chisel to clean up the round corners left by the router bit. I then sanded the shelf and sides down to 100 grit. I tilted the blade on the tablesaw 3 degrees and cut a bevel on the bottom of the sides so that they would sit flush on the bottom. I then did a second dryfit, this time including the shelf. I cut the top to its final size, 19 inches square and called it a day.

"If you spend your whole life waiting for the storm, you'll never enjoy the sunshine." ~Morris West

Hummingbird Inlayed Jewelrybox

2009-04-05T21:06:00.003-04:00

I've been practicing lately with double bevel marquetry because like many woodworking techniques you need to work on it to have any kind of success with it. One of my favorite subjects to work on is hummingbirds, they are very colorful and have an interesting shape. This image you see at the left is one I made for this jewelry box, its set into a nice piece of Walnut veneer that I cut. I used Mahagony, Maple, Wenge, Lignum Vitae, Cherry, and Zebrawood. I cut some of the Mahagony along the endgrain to get the figure that I used in the flower.

After all the marquetry was complete I flattened it with a hand scraper and then applied a few coats of Watco Danish oil to bring out the grain of the different woods. I glued the veneer onto a substrate of 1/4 inch Baltic Birch plywood.

The box is made out of Bolivian Rosewood milled to 1/2 inch thick and simply mitered with a few 23 guage pins to reinforce the corners. After sanding I cut the top off on the tablesaw leaving a very thin piece of wood to be removed with a handsaw. I cleaned up the remaining wood with a block plane and some sanding. I then went on to route in the hinges and attach them. A few coats of Danish oil and some dark wax finished off the outside of the box.

Inside the box I used a wine colored flocking to cover the plywood inside the top and bottom of the box, leaving the sides uncovered. I've made a few little boxes but they are not my strong suit, the tollerances are much higher and any little defect shows right up, but this was a gift and I think it turned out great.

"The child is in me still...and sometimes not so still." ~Mr. Rogers

Arched Aurora End Table finished!

2009-03-29T21:30:00.003-04:00

Over the past week I put the finishing touches on my Aurora End Table from Darrell Peart's class. I used the finish recipe that Darrell recommended in his blog, that is General Finishes Water based Dye, 7 parts orange, 4 parts medium brown, followed by many coats of General Finishes Arm-r-Seal all hand rubbed. I used one coat of the dye followed by a light hand sanding to get rid of any raised grain. I also did a very light sanding between every few coats of Arm-r-seal. When I was happy with the build up on the finish I completed the project with a coat of Watco light liquid wax. I was torn on wether to use the light wax or the dark wax, but I wanted to keep the look as light as possible so I went with the light wax. The table was originally going to be a bedside table for my guest room but it was so beautiful I wanted it somewhere where it would be seen often and appreciated. Thanks again to Darrell for all his teaching on this project and to Marc for some great company and finishing advice. This was my first true Greene and Greene style project, I don't think that it will be the last.

"Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work." - Thomas A. Edison

Aurora Arched End Table Class

2009-03-12T01:29:00.004-04:00

This week I'm attending a class at William Ng's School of Fine Woodworking in Anaheim, California, taught by noted woodworker, author, and Greene & Greene style furniture expert Darrell Peart. I'm here with my friend Marc Spagnuolo and I was thinking of blogging on my experience but Marc is doing such a great job posting that I think that I'll just direct you over to his posts at http://thewoodwhisperer.com/.

The picture at the left is some exquisite Ribbon African Mahogany that the school had in supply in there huge wood storage room. Not only was the figure amazing, the board wide and long enough that Marc and I used it for both of our tops. The facility here is excellent, a large machine room filled with finely tuned, high quality woodworking machines arranged in a logical, efficient way, and an equally large bench/teaching room with the biggest solid maple benches that you've ever seen. The staff is very friendly, helpful and attentive to your requests. William shows up every morning with a smile and a box of the best donuts in the world. William is in the process of creating an online store for the nice selection of woodworking tools and supplies that he stocks at the school. He also has some very nice t-shirts that both Marc and I are getting our hands on before we are done here, look for them on Marc's shop cam, I'm sure that he'll be sporting one soon.

"Sleep is the best meditation." ~His Holiness, the Dalai Lama

Greene & Greene Details II class

2009-03-09T00:38:00.009-04:00

This weekend I had to privilege of attending a class on some of the details associated with the Greene & Greene style of furniture given by Darrell Peart at the William Ng School of Fine Woodworking in lovely Anaheim, California. Those of you that know something about me know that I live in Charleston, SC, about as far as you can get from Anaheim in this country, so why did I travel this far for a class? Well, first I've been a fan of the Greene & Greene Style for many years, second, I bought Darrell's book, Greene & Greene : Design Elements for the Woodshop as soon as it came out, in fact, I had pre-ordered it from Barnes and Noble prior to the publication date. I've drooled over his creations and re-creations of the style and read many of his posts in the Yahoo Greene & Greene group that he founded.

Darrell demonstrated techniques to use in creating many of the details of the style to the class, he then guided us through the process and circled the room giving hints and suggestions and just being a great guy to talk to. We learned how to create the signature base fingers seen in many Greene & Greene designs as well as square and rectangular pillowed ebony plugs, the drawer finger joint that is a hallmark of the style and two different types of drawer pulls.

Of course I wouldn't have travelled across the country for just a weekend class, I'm continuing on with Darrell this week building the Arched Aurora End Table along with my friend Marc Spagnuolo of The WoodWhisperer.com, it should be a fun week of woodworking and merriment.

It was a wonderful class that I would highly recommend to anyone with an interest in the Greene & Greene style, Asian influenced furniture, of just a woodworker that is looking to learn some new and interesting techniques from a master of the craft.

"If we could see the miracle of a single flower clearly, our whole life would change." ~Buddha

500 Chairs

2009-02-26T21:16:00.003-05:00

I picked up this book today for inspiration and eye candy. The book, 500 Chairs, Celebrating Traditional &innovative Designs is a collection of chairs, some functional, some merely "art" pieces collected by the editors at Lark Books. This volume is a part of a series of "500" books it is basically a picture book with one or two views of each chair and a listing of the artists.

While this book only contains contemporary makers there are three entries done by Sam Maloof. You will recognize some or the names from the Woodworking magazines and gallery pages. There are finely executed Philadelphia chairs and classic Windsor chairs along with "chairs" that look like they would be more at home in a collection of "500 Torture devices of the Spanish Inquisition". There are beautiful, highly figured wooden chairs and ones made out of the strangest materials imaginable, think latex gloves and industrial foam.

I've found this book to be very inspirational and gotten quite a few interesting ideas from it. Bendable plywood and marine grade plywood seem to be used by many of the artists, I think that I would like to try some forming with bendable plywood for a chair back and seat for a recliner. I also picked up a few ideas for a really nice shop stool that will be made from solid wood, perhaps in a free form design.

Next time you are in your local Barnes and Noble walk over to the Art section and look for an 8 inch square book that is 1 1/2 inches thick and browse through it, you might just want to take it home, I did.

What's another word for Thesaurus? Steven Wright

Mistakes made

2009-02-22T22:07:00.003-05:00

When I first embarked on this wonderful hobby I was so very excited to start making pieces of furniture for my home. I checked out every book on furniture plans I could find at our library, I obsessively poured over all the magazines for articles on projects that I liked. I started to buy books of plans as I purchased tools. I immediately began building furniture, I couldn't wait to finish projects and have them to use.

That was the big problem and it took me a few years to realize it. I was rushing through the process. I was making things, but something was lacking in my understanding of what it meant to be a woodworker. I had some decent power tools, I had alot of books and magazines. I had a nice selection of wood to use, and plans to use it on. I didn't have alot of hand tools, and now that I look back, I didn't have alot of skills.

In the picture above you can see scratches in the door panel left from the planer that I failed to remove. And in the picture to the left you can see where I relied too much on my power planer and since I didn't know how, and didn't have a scraper or a low angle plane I ended up with tearout on the curly maple that I wouldn't tolerate today.

If you look closely in this picture you'll notice saw marks from trimming the door down with my tablesaw, now, I'd take a sharp, well tuned plane and with a few nice swipes I would have had the door with an exact fit and no ugly saw marks. You will also notice that the bridle joint is offset to the front instead of being centered even though the rails were inset by 1/8th of an inch, what I had done was cut the joint before I planed down the stiles to 5/8ths and the rails to 1/2, I don't even know why I did this.

This picture makes me cringe, yes, this cabinet is dovetailed, and pretty well too, but it is done wrong. The pins should be on the vertical surfaces and the tails should be on the horizontal surfaces.
Lack of understanding, but a really nice Leigh D1600 dovetail jig, gave me nice tight dovetails that were completely wrong. All in all its a nice little cabinet that lives by my back door and holds keys, a coupe of flashlights and bug spray, people see it and love it, but I see it and hang my head in shame. Granted, now I do have a shop, and I have alot of really nice tools, heck, I have handplanes that cost more than the tablesaw I had when I made this cabinet. I also have the knowledge and skills to use those handtools and to not only make a piece, but to make it right. I've learned a great deal from my online friends, I've taken a few courses and I've focused on technique, not just the final object. I've watched others and I've learned a great deal, but the most important thing I've learned is that it is the process that makes the final product something of value.

"The quieter you become, the more you can hear." ~Baba Ram Dass

Carter Magnetic Bandsaw Fence

2009-02-15T20:16:00.003-05:00

I saw this product online the other day and I wanted to see if it was the answer to one of my problems. When I installed a 3/4 inch woodslicer blade on my Rikon 14 inch bandsaw I had quite a bit more drift than I have been used to. I talked to a few of the guys on The Woodwhisperer chat room and Marc AKA The Woodwhisperer and found that I had probably overtensioned the blade so I started over and tensioned it by "feel" instead of using the gauge. This helped quite abit but there was still more drift in the blade than my fence could compensate for, I was in the process of planning a shop made fence when I came across this one and ordered it right away.

The fence is made by Carter, the same people that make bearing guides and aftermarket tension springs for most bandsaws. I ordered mine from Woodcraft who seemed to be the only company carrying it at the time I ordered. It's made from extruded aluminum with a cam lever on either side to remove the fence once its locked to the table. Even using the levers its not easy to move this fence, there are 7, 1 inch rare earth magnets that hold the fence to any ferrous surface, do NOT get your finger between this fence and the table.

Once the fence is in place it will not move, its a very stable, completely square fence. It is simple to use but maybe not the easiest to adjust. I would suggest that you determine your drift angle, and using bevel gauge transfer a pencil line and the correct angle and correct distance from the blade, align and set the fence on this line, you can make fine adjustments by using one of the cam levers to raise one side and pushing that side into place.

The instruction sheet says that you can also use the fence as a small extension table, I don't know if I'll ever use it like this but I wanted to show you that it was possible. One thing for sure is that you will never lack for a good place to store this fence, just stick it to the bottom of the table or to the frame of your bandsaw.

Now drift angle compensation is not a problem and I'll be able to cut fine slices for inlays or veneer with no more issues.

"There is no need for temples...My brain and my heart are my temples; my philosophy is kindness." ~Dalai Lama

Shop made Bowsaw

2009-01-24T20:36:00.003-05:00

What do you do on a rainy Saturday when you don't want to start a project that is going to take weeks? Why make a shop tool of course. I've made a couple of wooden planes and upgraded some saw handles but I thought it was time to attempt a Bowsaw. I found a great article on the Fine Woodworking website listed under specialty skills, making shop tools. I'm sure that you've all seen Frank Klausz cut dovetails with a bow or frame saw, of course I don't think that having a bowsaw will make me cut as well or as fast as Mr. Klausz.

My inspiration for this was a broken 1/4 inch bandsaw blade, here's something that you can do that costs you nothing and lets you recycle that broken blade. All you need is a 14x5 inch piece of 4/4 hardwood, I had some beautiful curly maple boards that I thought would be prefect. You'll notice two boards and two sets of arms, I decided that it was just as easy to make two as to make one and maybe I'll have a nice gift for someone when I'm finished.

Using the template that is in the article I made a template out of 1/2 MDF to make it easier to transfer the marks. I ripped two 1 3/4 inch pieces out of each board and one 1 inch piece out of each.

I transferred the shape onto each 1 3/4 inch piece and then layed out the holes that need to be drilled. One 1/2 inch hole for the handle and knob on the bottom and the start of the mortises that will receive the stretcher.

Once the holes are drilled I cleaned out the waste from the mortises with a chisel. I then could take the arms to the bandsaw and cut out the shape. After cleaning the saw marks off on the oscillating spindle sander I used a 1/4 inch 1/4 round router bit in the router table to ease the edges, leaving the area in front of the mortise and the bottom where the handle and knob will go square. I then used a combination of block plane, spokeshave, and sandpaper to taper the "horns" of the arms. I then formed the tenons on the ends of the stretch to fit loosely so that the arms could move freely. I also rounded over the edges of the stretcher on the router table.

Using a left over piece of curly maple I resawed it to 1/4 inch and cut a little flapper that is used to tension the saw.

I went over to my friend's shop down the street and used his lathe to turn a handle and knob. I don't use lathe's and this was the very first thing that I've ever turned. I had planned on turning two handles and two knobs, but really close to finishing the first handle the tenon from and the handle went flying. Oh well, the next handle came out great and I learned to go very easily with the scraper when forming the tenon. When I went to setting the second knob into the center it split, so I had one handle and one knob.
Taking those pieces back to my shop I cut a slot down the center of each tenon on the handle and knob to receive the blade and drilled a hole at 90 degrees to the cut through the tenon. I cut the blade to length and drilled hole at each end. I slipped the blade into the slot and pushed a 4d finish nail through the hole. Then I tied a leather boot lace around the horns of the arms and used the little flapper to wind the lace and tension the blade.

Once I was sure that the saw was working properly and cutting nicely I took it apart and applied a few coats of Watco natural Danish oil, after letting it sit for an hour I wiped everything dry and trimmed off the excess leather laces.

There you are, one afternoon and I have a new tool that costs me nothing and will let me use that broken blade. Hope you make your own, there is nothing better than tools you make yourself.

"Happiness is not something ready made. It comes from your own actions." ~Dalai Lama

My Newest Toy

2009-01-24T20:12:00.007-05:00

Well friends, I did it. After taking the doublebevel inlay class with David Marks I had to get a decent scrollsaw so I could add inlays to some of my upcoming projects. I got the DeWalt variable speed scrollsaw with stand and light. Yesterday the saw and light showed up and this morning the stand came, so like a five year old on Christmas morning I couldn't wait to unwrap it and put it together. Assembling the stand was just a matter of bolting the legs to the stretchers. The saw only required attaching the table to the saw, while two screws on the side of the saw came off to hold the light in place.

After all was said and done I had one last thing to add, that's right, I had to put a WoodWhisperer sticker on the leg just for kicks.

Enjoy the pictures, I'm sure that very soon I'll have some doublebevel inlays to show you.

“Your work is to discover your work and then with all your heart to give yourself to it.” - Buddha

David Marks Class at Woodzone

2009-01-19T21:23:00.003-05:00

Today I had to good fortune to attend a workshop day with David J. Marks , craftsman, artist, teacher and former host of DIY networks Woodworks. Today's class focused on router template inlay and double bevel marquetry. We also learned about sharpening card scrapers using water stones.

The class was held at Columbia South Carolina's Woodzone. David had taught 4 classes over the weekend and Monday was listed as an all day workshop. This is the second year that the nice folks at Woodzone have brought David to Columbia to teach and give workshops.

David is in the process of building a school of woodworking in Northern California and spends the winter months travelling the country teaching classes at events like this one. From here he was on his way back to California for one day then off again to Houston for more classes.

Many of you know that our friend Marc Spagnuolo spent time with David when he was planning to leave the world of lab science and move into full time woodworking. I had on my The WoodWhisperer T-shirt , David recognized it right away and asked about Marc and The Woodwhisperer website. While setting up the router inlay bushing on the router provided by the store David noticed that there was a screw missing on the base, I was standing there talking with him at the time so he used my Dewalt plunge router instead, (I may never wash it).
After the template routing David showed us his double bevel marquetry technique that gives you a perfect fit inlay every time. Instead of my trying to describe it here click on the link above for a video David has placed on Youtube of the technique. I have to say, that I've never done any inlay other than a few dovetail butterfly's but using David's method I was able to create my own design and put it in wood in just a few minutes as was most of the class.
I haven't taken many woodworking classes but I have to say that this type class with this class of instructor is something I plan to repeat. I feel that I've reached a plateau in my skill level and classes like this are pushing the bar higher.

Thank you David for your time and talent today and for opening up new avenues for my woodworking, I plan on incorporating some Harvey Ellis designed inlays into a piece in the near future.

Everywhere is walking distance if you have the time.

Steven Wright

Plane Hunting

2008-12-23T16:25:00.007-05:00

Finding myself in Upstate NY over the Holiday week I did a little hunting, plane hunting. I knew from my previous visits up here that there was a great antique mall that had a hug hand tool section. Leaving Pam to look through the rest of the antiques I headed straight for my prey. This booth has a bunch of old Stanley, Bailey, and Sargent Plane's all in very good shape. He also had many wooden molding planes and a few wooden rabetting planes that were tempting, but that wasn't what I was gunning for. I was looking for a large style router plane to go with my small Lee Valley router plane. Something like a Stanley 71.

There was a nice wooden coffin smoother in this bunch much like one that I plan to make, I looked it over but the throat was pretty wide so I decided to go with one I make and keep looking for the router plane.

More eye candy for you old plane nuts.

Some very nice old heavy metal for your viewing pleasure, a couple of those No.# 7's were tempting.

Finally I spotted my goal, a whole herd of router planes, some old, some lame, but I singled out this prime buck and he was mine. As you can see, bright metal, never been rusted, good looking handles, all parts there. This plane has been well kept and used, you can see lap marks on the bottom, which is gleaming silver, and the blade was sharp even with a micro bevel. Someone loved this plane and now it's going to live in my tool chest and get used alot.

Kaytrim in The Woodwhisperer chat room helped me date this as between 1910-1924, perfect timing for the Arts and Crafts Period. I particularly like the Script "Stanley 71 1/2" and the patent date of 10-29-01, that's 1901.

As a bonus I also found a very nice spoke shave, Stanley No.# 51, the blade is stamped, Stanley Rule and Level Co. This tool has been used well, but not abused, again, no rust, no missing parts. A little sharpening and wax and its ready for work.

Happy Holiday's to you all, and good hunting.
Brad

the Ulitimate guy present

2008-12-11T21:32:00.006-05:00

I was walking in Lowes yesterday trying to decide what to get my brothers for Christmas and I bumped into the ultimate guy toy.

It is a $1600 stainless steel toolbox from Kobalt.
This behemoth holds 4000 lbs worth of tools, probably more than even the most diehard car nut has. It has LED lights in the upper lid. All the drawers run on ball bearing full extension guides and are lined with thick rubber padding in Kobalt's trademark blue color. You have to plug this bad boy in to power the lights and the stereo system, but it has a protected power strip on the side. It has a Pioneer CD player with its own speaker's and a connection for your iPod.

What looks like a cabinet door on the lower left is actually a refrigerator for "refreshments" and snacks.

While I am a wood guy and not a car guy, I can see why someone would lust after one of these babies. I can see this parked in a spotless garage with an epoxy painted floor next to a vintage sports car that only sees the road on sunny weekends. A car thats something that you work on and polish, a car that looks really great sitting next to your Stainless steel huge toolbox.

Workshop Redux

2008-11-23T21:50:00.004-05:00

Things have conspired to keep me from finishing the Craftsman Tool Cabinet. A couple of house projects that needed my attention but this weekend I didn't have anything planned other than making a couple of more drawers for the Tool Cabinet, but then my new Bandsaw was delivered. Of course I had to put it together and get everything square, true, aligned and running well.

I had no problems with setting up my new Rikon 14" Deluxe Bandsaw, I had to put the stand cabinet together, set the saw on top (with the help of my neighbor) attach the table, fence, and handwheels. The body of the saw was complete in the box, it even had a blade installed.

My problem came when I started to try to walk around the shop. What started out as a spacious shop had turned into a cramped space with machines in the way every time I moved around. I decided it was time to make some changes. When I first designed my shop I envisioned a back bench where I would use all my benchtop tools and a downdraft sanding station where I would do all my sanding. Now, the benchtop is blocked by my mortiser which is no longer a benchtop, but lives on its own mobile base, and my router table that has moved from the front of the shop to the back. The downdraft area has become the place where I sit my sanders when I'm not using them on the assembly table and a repository for clamps that don't have a home. I've also added a belt/disc sander to go along with the oscillating spindle sander to add to the clutter.

So this weekend I spent my time cleaning the clutter off the bench, and removing all the junk that has been living under the bench over the years. This bench was 3 feet wide and ran the length of the back of the shop, so removing it will add about 45 sq ft of floor space to the shop. I started making a rolling cabinet that is going to hold the oscillating spindle sander and the belt sander. This cabinet will also have storage drawers for the supplies for both machines. I was able to push the router table and the mortiser back against the back wall. Once the cabinet is complete I'll have all the machines mobile and pushed against the wall, this will give me more room to move around the shop without poking myself in the back with sharp corners.

The next step will be to redo my well used assembly table so something with more storage and less of a dust collecting area that just holds jigs and extra wood. I'm thinking something like Marc's table. After that I'll attack the side counter and cabinets organizing and adding more drawers for storage.

Maybe all this cleaning and storage will lead me to a more creative space where my skills will improve.

Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes.

Mahatma Gandhi

Craftsman Tool Cabinet. Part 4

2008-10-26T21:47:00.009-04:00

This weekend I worked on the doors for my Crafsman Tool Cabinet. I took my planes and placed them in their new homes and everything fits great. I took some nice Ambrosia Maple and resawed it to get bookmatched panels for the doors. I left the panels at 3/8th on an inch because holders will be attached to the doors.

I ripped some Quartersawn white oak to 2 1/2 inches wide and the bottom stiles at 3 1/2 inches wide. I then cut a 3/8th inch wide, 1/2 inch deep groove in each piece. I then cut the mortises for the stiles into the rails at the mortiser. I cut tenons into the stiles on the table saw then trimmed the fit with a shoulder plane.

I trimmed the panels to fit into the door frames and did a dry fit that you see here. After some final sanding, and a little touch up on the bottom of this panel with a plane, I sealed the panels with a coat of clear shellac so that the Dark Walnut Danish Oil would not penetrate the panels. This morning I unclamped the doors and trimmed them to fit exactly on the cabinet. After some hand sanding and cleaning I masked the panels with blue tape and wiped on a coat of Dark Walnut Watco Danish Oil.

Later today I cut all the drawer fronts out of Ambrosia Maple and the drawer sides out of 1/2 inch Baltic Birch cabinet plywood. After a coat of amber shellac and some wax I'll hand the doors and next weekend its on to handcutting some dovetails.

Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger. J. R. R. Tolkien

Craftsman Inlay

2008-10-20T14:54:00.003-04:00

Back in February I had a post about Arts and Crafts inlays, today I was looking through the Fall 2008 issue of Style 1900 and I came across an ad for a new site specializing in Stickley and Ellis inlays in wood and metal. The guys at Craftsman Inlay offer reproduction inlays in a sheet of veneer ready to be included in your latest masterpiece.

They also offer custom inlay creation services from your images. I'm sure that the number of inlays that are offered will increase as their business grows.

The following is from their website.

About Us
The two of us share a passion for creating beautiful wood products
and for Arts and Crafts furniture styles. Combining our interests and
talents motivated us to start our company, Craftsman Inlay. Most of our favorite
Arts and Crafts designs include custom inlays, so it was a natural move to
re-create some of our favorite metal inlays from the designs of Ellis and
Stickley. Their designs were only produced for a short time, so we are
excited to bring these great designs back into production and offer them at
reasonable prices.
Dean Orsborn and Ben Brunick

Craftsman Tool Cabinet. Part 3

2008-10-19T21:30:00.004-04:00

With the final dryfit complete I disassembled the case and gave each piece a final sanding and started thinking about the glue up. As you can see, there are quite a few parts to this cabinet so you have to start with some sub assemblies. First I glued the vertical dividers to the thicker of the horizontal dividers and then I added the top divider. I clamped this assembly with a squaring block while I get the other parts in line. Starting with one side flat on the bench I placed the sub assembly in the corresponding dadoes. I glued the small vertical divider to the thick horizontal divider, I followed this with the shelf. Repeat with the next small vertical divider and the bottom shelf. I added the lower horizontal divider. I glued in the bottom dovetails and the two top stretchers. Finally I started the other side on the dovetails, painted some glue bottom half of the pins and the top half of the tails. I started banging the side down with my fist while lining up the interior dividers to meet with the dadoes on the side. Amazingly everything came together pretty easily. A few clamps to hold everything tight and I let it sit overnight.

Once the clamps were removed I attached the top to the case with some glue and a couple of screws in the back to help support the french cleat. I finished the cabinet with a coat of dark walnut Watco Danish oil, followed by a couple of coats of shellac. I cut a 1/2 inch thick plywood back and painted it dark green. I attached the plywood to the back with brad nails along the edge and across the stretchers.
I cut a french cleat to attach to the back to go with the cleats that I have around the shop wall. I also added a block to the bottom of the cabinet to hold the cabinet off the wall the thickness of the cleat.

Now I can take my time and make the doors and the drawers. The door inserts and the drawer fronts will be out of Ambrosia Maple.

"All that is gold does not glitter; not all those that wander are lost." - J. R. R. Tolkien

Craftsman Tool Cabinet. Part 2

2008-10-15T10:37:00.003-04:00

Keeping with the theme of the hand tool cabinet I hand cut the dovetails for the case this weekend. Doing the joinery by hand will definitely slow you down and force you to take you time to get it just right. If you read Chris Schwarz's chapter on this project from Popular Woodworking's Arts and Crafts Furniture Projects book you'll find some very nice techniques for cutting these through dovetails. I used his method and clamped the two sides together and cut all the tails at the same time, this was no more difficult than cutting one board. Chris says, and I agree that cutting both together helps you get squarer cuts across the board.

The top of the case is spanned by tow horizontal stretchers each dovetailed into the sides. I cut a single dovetail for each of these 3 inch wide boards. I then transferred the lines to the boards using a marking knife and cut the pin. By cutting on the waste side of the lines and paring to the lines with a sharp chisel you get a very tight fitting joint. A dovetail joint should go together with just a little bit of force banging your hand. If it takes a large dead blow hammer , it is too tight, pare away the contact areas and try again. My problems with hand cut dovetails when I first started was that I tried to cut too close to the line and ended up with loose sloppy joints. I recommend the article and accompanying video in the latest issue of Fine Woodworking on a visit to the Dovetail Doctor.

I laid out the bottom dovetails in a staggered fashion to reflect the hand cut nature of the joint. I didn't go with very small pins as this cabinet will hold a great deal of weight. The most difficult part of hand cutting these joints is chiseling out the waste, using a set of very sharp chisels and a mallet makes it easier. I chiseled them out from the inside then switched sides half way through to avoid blowing out the wood on the other side. Much like before I cut on the waste side of the line then pared up to the line.

What I ended up with was a sturdy cabinet with tight dovetails. After a trial fit I disassembled the case and added the interior partitions. With the final dry fit done the next step will be some sanding and smoothing and then glue up of the cabinet. Doors and drawers will follow.
On an unrelated note, one of my local woodworking stores, Mann Tools, has started carrying 10BF project packs of 4/4 wood bundled in 3-4 foot lenghts. The interesting thing is the price, I got two of these in very nice ribbon Mahagony for half the price that its going for. They are also starting to carry some very wide, (24-36 inch) stock in some exotic species like waterfall Bubinga. Its pricey but would make some very cool tabletops.

"Somebody has to do something, and it's just incredibly pathetic that it has to be us." - Jerry Garcia

Craftsman Tool Cabinet.

2008-10-05T20:42:00.003-04:00

So I started out with just one block plane, of course, it was a POS home center Stanley, the one in the picture with the red palm rest. I added to that with a better block plane, then a pretty good made in England Stanley No. 4. This was followed up by a couple of small shoulder planes and a Stanley No. 80 scraper plane. I picked up a couple of antique Stanley planes, cleaned them up and sharpened the blades and they cut okay. But then, I made the mistake of trying out a well tuned Lie-Nielsen block plane, I finally realised what a high quality plane could do. That started my downfall, a low angle L-N block plane, a L-N block shoulder plane, these planes rocked. I made my first wooden plane last spring and with a nice blade it cut surprizingly well. At IWF this year I ordered a Lee Valley low angle smoothing plane and a scraping plane, both of which are awesone right out of the box. Well the downside of all this is that now I have nowhere to keep all these tools except a drawer that is now too crouded and I'm afraid that they will be damaged. So now I'm making a cabinet to hold all my prized hand planes.

I'm using Chris Schwarz's plan from Popular Woodworking's Arts and Crafts Furniture Projects book but changing it some. My Lee Valley scraper plane is wider than the cubbies that he called for so I adjusted them so two cubbies are 4 inches wide and I made up for it with two smaller cubbies that will fit my No. 4 plane and my L-N block planes. I also used quartersawn white oak instead of Cherry because thats what I have plenty of in my wood supply. I haven't decided yet how the doors will look but I think that I'm going to change the look of the top.

I glued up the stock yesterday after planing it to the appropriate thickness. Today I unclamped the stock and used the smoothing plane to flush the panels. I then cut the panels to size and started on the dado's for the cubbies and dividers. At the end of the day today I had my first dry fit, you'll notice that the cubbies on the left are wider than the ones on the right. Below the plane cubbies will be 4 small drawers and 2 larger drawers. I plan to add a rack for my fine chisels inside one of the doors and a holder for my Gent's saw on the other. The drawers will hold my marking guages and knives, my files and rasps, and other tools that are banging around in the one large drawer now.

I've learned that hand tools are an important addition to a powertool shop and that quality tools make the difference. What I'm trying to teach myself, and this is hard, is to slow down and take my time. I've always worked quickly and I think that sometimes what I need to do is to not rush through a project, but slow down and work more on precision. My projects come out looking great but there are pieces and parts that could be better, probably no one knows this but me, but it does bother me. So now, for me, I want to slow down and take my time with each and every part of a project.

The important thing is not to stop questioning. Albert Einstein

Stickley Footstool, Part 3

2008-09-28T21:50:00.003-04:00

The Stickley footstool is finished and in place next to the extra large Morris chair. I finished it to match the chair and used matching fabric for the cushion. Pam was very happy when I bought it into the house and immediately curled up with her book in the chair.

One of the most rewarding things about being a woodworker is making high quality furniture for your home. I'm slowly filling my home and those of my friends with furniture that I've made. You can't find furniture like this in most stores and if you do you can't afford it. It gives me a huge amount of satisfaction to take rough boards and transform them into fine furniture.

As long as you derive inner help and comfort from anything, keep it. - Mahatma Gandhi

Meditation Bench

2008-09-25T21:46:00.011-04:00

This project is a meditation bench for my friend Jameela, its so a person can maintain a comfortable posture during extended mediation. I had no plan for this but I wanted an oriental feel so I added a cross stretcher with a slight arch and mitered ends at 10 degrees. After doing some research on the Internet I found that the seat should be angled at 10 degrees and the front of the bench should be between 6-7 inches. I had a nice curly maple board that was just long enough to get the seat and both legs out of in my stash. I cut the legs with a 80 degree angle on the top with the front 6 1/2 inches tall. I laid out for two through tenons in each leg and a notch for the mahogany cross stretcher. I cut a bevel on the top of the cross stretcher and cut notches to mate with legs.

I fit the cross stretcher in the legs and tried to visualize the best arch for the bench, I decided to start the arch on the outside of the miter and run it all the way across the stretcher.

I used an adjustable bow to lay out a pleasing looking arch and traced it, I cut it with the bandsaw and cleaned it up with a flexible sanding block.

The arched cross stretcher in place. I was very happy with the results. Now the hard part starts.

I didn't get any pictures of the process but I laid out the mortises using the tenons. I drilled out the waste and cleaned them up with some sharp chisels. Curly maple is a form of hard maple and its very difficult to cut and pare but if you take your time and are careful you can get good results. I eased the edges of the maple with an 1/8th inch round over bit but left the mahogany edges square.

I trimmed the tenons with a flushcut saw and cleaned them up with a block plane. I finished the top with a card scraper. I finished the piece with several coats of natural Danish oil and two coats of satin carnuba wax. I'll let the next few pictures speak for themselves.

Have compassion for all beings, rich and poor alike; each has their suffering. Some suffer too much, others too little. - Buddha

Stickley Footstool, Part 2

2008-09-14T21:06:00.008-04:00

I spent this weekend finishing up the Stickley Footstool, I decided that since it was just a single drawer that it would be faster and easier to hand cut the dovetails instead of setting up the Leigh jig for half blind and through dovetails. Well... I underestimated how difficult it would be to cut the half blind pins in quartsawn white oak. My first attempt turned out great, nice tight fit and everything, the second side however was sloppy, so I gave up for the afternoon on Friday and walked away.

Saturday morning I cut a fresh drawer side out of poplar and carefully lined up the pins and gave it a good whack with a mallet. This left a perfect impression of the pins on the tail board. I carefully cut out the tails and had a perfect fit, I may switch and use this method to begin with instead of cutting the tails and marking them on the pin board. I ran a groove around the bottom and inserted a 1/4 inch plywood bottom for the drawer.

From all the pictures I've found of the original the edges of the legs seem rounded over, so I installed a 1/8th inch quarter round bit in the router table and ran the leg sides and ends. I inserted 1/2 inch plywood into the grooves at the top and bottom and glued up the sides. Sunday I removed the drawer and footstool from the clamps. I trimmed the pins flush on the drawers with a low angle block plane and sanded everything smooth. Next comes the finish and some antique hardware that I picked up last winter in upstate NY. Instead of rapping the edge of the stool in leather and using tacks like the picture of the original I plan on upholstering a piece of plywood with 4 inch foam to fit inside the top.

"He has achieved success who has worked well, laughed often, and loved much." Elbert Hubbard

Limbert Fern Stand, Felicia's table

2008-09-12T22:06:00.003-04:00

This nice little table was delivered to Felicia Day today and being the sweetheart that she is, she wasted no time in unpacking it while taking pictures and making up a funny little comic of it.
If you are at all into online gaming you might know her as the writer/producer/actress responsible for the award winning Webshow The Guild now in second season production. Or if you, like me, are a Joss Whedon fan, you might know her as Penny alongside Neil Patrick Harris and Nathan Fillion in Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, or as Potential Slayer Vi, in the final season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Felicia is IMHO the most websavvy, online connected actress in Hollywood, she's in the top 50 of people followed on Twitter. Felicia also is in many comercials and tv shows and movies. Basically she's a very talented woman and a working actress, plus she's really cool and geeky.

She tweeted (its going to be a word soon like googled) that she was going to the New Media Expo and I knew that Marc and Nicole were going there so I asked Nicole to get a picture for me, which she did, Nicole is so awesome. Nicole helped me get in touch with Felicia and I told her I was making a Limbert Fern table for my blog and that I would like to send it to her is she was interested. Felicia wrote me back right away saying that it would fit right into her 1925 Spanish Colonial and to please send it.

I'm not usually someone that sends emails and stuff to celebrities but Felicia seemed so nice, and from reading her website and blog I saw that she reads the same books as I do, our politics are the same, and she likes old houses. I think though the thing that made me really think that I wanted to contact her was her blog post about having a dream about Reese Whiterspoon, if you've read it you'll understand, by the way Felicia, Reese has a house here in Charleston, if you come to town maybe we could go stalk her together.

In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act. - George Orwell

Stickley Footstool, Part 1

2008-09-09T13:39:00.015-04:00

NOTE: Please be aware that the picture to the left is of a reproduction made my Kevin Creedy, I had thought the picture was from an auction catalog, it was also a Limbert, not a Stickley. I stand corrected.

This project is based on Stickley's "Smoker's Footstool", I guess back in the day when Dad got home he'd want to sit in his Morris Chair and puff on his pipe, basically smelling up the house and exposing his kids to the dangers of second hand smoke. Luckily things have changed somewhat in the hundred years since its debut and hopefully Dad's aren't smoking in the house. So I'm going to rename this "Reader's Footstool" as the drawer is a good place to keep your book safe and at hand.

I started with one board of 8 inch wide 4/4 quartersawn white oak and one board of 8/4 quartersawn white oak. I cut two lengths 18 inches and two lengths 15 inches. I jointed and planed the 8/4 inch stock to 1 3/4 inches thick and ripped 4 legs 1 3/4 inches square. I then ripped one of the 18 inch pieces to 1 1/2 inch, 4 inches and 2 1/4 inches for the top rail, drawer front, and bottom rail.

If you zoom in on this image you can see the cabinet maker's triangle that keeps the woodgrain aligned, this will help me keep the grain on the drawer in place with the top and bottom rails.
You will also notice that I used a dado blade to cut 3/4 inch long, 3/8 inch thick tenons on the ends all the sides but not the drawer front.

I reset the dado blade to 1/2 inch and ran a dado 3/4 inches from the top and 1 3/4 inches from the bottom on all four sides that will later receive 1/2 inch plywood. I used a bow to draw a nice arch on the bottom of all the sides and cut them on the bandsaw, cleaning up the sawmarks on the spindle sander.

Sometimes its just faster and easier to use a handtool to cut the shoulder's of the tenons, I could have used the bandsaw but I've found that it tends to over cut and leave a notch in the board, so I prefer the gentleman's saw.

I layed out the mortises to leave me with a 1/2 inch of leg sticking out past the sides. After installing the 3/8th inch mortising chisel and squaring it to the fence I aligned the fence so that if I ran each leg outside face towards the fence they would all be aligned correctly. Remember that the drawer face isn't mortised the whole width of the side but just for the top and bottom rail.

With the mortises cleaned out a little hand fitting with a shoulder plane gives the tenons a perfect slip fit. Here is the first dry fit, the next step is to cut the plywood top and bottom, install drawer guides and make the drawer. This project will be the perfect companion for a Morris Chair or anytime you want to just kick back.

"No man is good enough to be another's master." - William Morris

Limbert Fern Stand, Felicia's table.

2008-09-04T21:51:00.009-04:00

Here is the completed Limbert Fern Stand for my friend Felicia. Its all glued up and sanded and ready for the finishing to begin.

But before I start finsihing its time for a little branding, I like to put my logo in a place that doesn't show unless you really look, this one is under the top. My brand is heated up with a propane torch and tested on scrap pieces of oak, once its hot enough I carefully place it and press firmly, there is no second chance here.

My finish process for an authentic Arts and Crafts look isn't simple and it isn't fast, but it looks great compared to original period pieces and it really "pops" the ray flecks in the quartersawn white oak.

Sand piece to 150 grit and clean with tack rag or vacuum.

Wipe a good coat of dye on, for this piece I chose Transtint Medium Brown dye in water, be sure to cover all sides and keep dye from puddling in corners and at base. Leave to dry for at least 24 hours.
Lightly sand to remove raised grain with 220 grit, avoid oversanding especially at corners and edges.
Pad on a 1LB cut of amber shellac or sanding sealer.
Using a 320 grit sanding pad gently rub surface, clean with tack cloth or vacuum.

Apply Brown Mahagony Gel stain being careful to not cover too large of an area because once dry its very hard to wipe off. Once the gel starts to haze rub it off with a clean lint free cloth, I prefer old T-shirts. This gives you a warm rubbed in look. Let dry overnight.

Pad on 2-3 2LB cut coats of amber shellac, I tightly fold a square of T-shirt material, then soak it in the shellac and squeeze out excess, rub it in until it starts to drag then let dry. The coat of shellac should dry in 30 minutes or less. Repeat until you get the build you want.
Again, using 320 grit sanding pad gently rub surface, clean with a tack cloth or vacuum.
Take a few minutes to go over the whole piece with your clean hand, checking the surface for any rough areas or holidays.
Using a clean square of T-shirt rub in a thick coat of Watco Dark Liquid wax. Avoid plain or light colored waxes as these may leave white residue in the pores of the oak. When the wax is dry buff it out with a clean square of T-shirt.

Let the wax sit and "harden" for a few days then its ready to take in the house or in this case, ready to be shipped across country. Hope you enjoy the table Felicia, it should fit right in with your old house.

"True art expressed in its simplest formula is merely use made beautiful" - Charles Limbert

I met NORM!!!, oh yeah Marc and Kaleo too.

2008-08-23T22:11:00.005-04:00

I wasn't going to do it, really I wasn't, but Nicole convinced me, "Look its not that long a line" she said.

I took a couple of days off from work this week and cashed in some hotel award points to go to the IWF this week in Atlanta. Seeing all the really cool machinery and tools was awesome, but the reason I went was to meet and hang out with two great friends that I've talked to and watched just about every weekday since I first met them a year and a half ago. Not growing up in the internet era its strange to have people in your life that you have never shaken hands with or hugged but still you feel close to. Of course many of you will know I'm talking about Marc and Nicole Spagnuolo, the creative team behind The Woodwhisperer. Two nicer people you will never encounter, I caught up with Nicole and Marc on Thursday at the Festool booth where Marc was demonstrating tools to a rapt crowd and Nicole was making sure the live webcam was up and running and chatting with the regulars in The Woodwhisperer chat room. Nicole greated me with a warm hug and almost right away turned to the mic on her laptop to announce my arrival to the chat room "Tree's here" she says, my screen name of course is TreefrogFurniture, better known in chat room shorthand as Tree. We stood around and talked, yes not chatted, but actuallly spoke to each other, while Marc answered questions to all the Festool lusters. Once the last straggler leaves Marc steps over from his little stage to shake my hand and say hi but then is almost immediately pulled away to answer another question. Those Festool guys keep him busy.

I kind of felt like they were busy at the Festool booth so I wondered around the exhibit hall the rest of the afternoon seeing what kind of cool free stuff I could pick up and stopping back in every so often to talk with Nicole and chat with my friends in the chatroom, I even tried to get into the webcam shot so they could see what I looked like finally. We were hoping to be able to catch dinner but the corporate guys had other plans and, after all, it is a work week for Marc. To tell the truth, I wasn't feeling my best and it all worked out for the best, I hit the couch in my hotel room, got some much needed rest and ordered Chinese. Friday morning we met at the Powermatic booth, well booth is too small a word for these things, think, football field. This seemed a much more layed back event for Marc and Nicole, kind of a meet and great instead of a product demo, giving us a better chance to hang out and talk. Many of you will recognize Kaleo Kala who got a chance to come at the last minute talking with Marc and Nicole.

We got the chance to walk over to the CNN center for lunch with a really cool rep from Jet Tools. After walking back over to the hall, did I mention how huge this place was, I again went on walk about and picked up a few more free shirts and at the Delta booth I won a precision router edge guide, luckily I have the router it goes on. I lucked out by walking up to the Delta product demo area just as Scott Phillips from The American Woodshop, was starting a demo of the all new Unisaw, it was me and a few other guys standing there while Scott gave a very in depth hands on demo of the saw. I won't try to describe all the things I saw at the show, I'll leave that to Marc, I'll just tell you that I walked about 20 miles around the show, new cool things are coming out in woodworking machinery, there are HUGE machines out there for production shops, and if you want to fill out your woodworking swag wardrobe, this is the place to do it.

Friday night Marc and Nicole hosted a meetup at a local sports bar and I met some of the nicest people all brought together from The Woodwhisperer site. I had a great time talking with two young couples that lived a few blocks from each other in Atlanta but didn't know it, we talked woodworking, tools, Olympics, and many other things. The food was good, the beer was cold, and the people were fantastic, thank you Marc and Nicole for hosting this event.

I have to say that Marc and Nicole are two of the nicest, most geniune, people that you'll ever want to meet. Nicole is just as cute and sweet as she seems in Marc's videos and on the chats. I can imagine that spending four days at a huge woodworking show isn't on many women's list of things they'd enjoy but she seemed to be having a great time everytime I saw her. She made sure that all the tech was up and running and took the webcam on walk about just so the viewers could get a look at the hall, all the while keeping up a running commentary. She's like your best friends hot little sister that was really smart, but could hang with the guys and probably kick your butt at any video game. Marc is just Marc, he's got the same sense of humor that you see on his videos but when its time, he puts on his game face and is all business about explaining the tools. Honestly, I'm not sure this guys owns a pair of long pants, at the Festool booth, all the corporate guys were in uniform, long dark pants, longsleeve matching Festool shirts, Marc, shorts, The WoodWhisperer t-shirt, five o'clock shadow at noon, its him, take of leave it. You meet him and you know you can hang out with this guy, and you can tell by talking with him for a few minutes that he know's his stuff and you'd like to spend some shop time with him too.

I had great time, I saw some machines I wanted, I got some great new t-shirts, I met some really cool people, and I got to spend some time with two very good friends. Oh yeah I met NORM!!!

"The things I make may be for others, but how I make them is for me."
— Tony Konovaloff

Limbert Fern Stand

2008-08-16T22:10:00.013-04:00

This is a nice little fern table that is based on the Limbert #244 fern stand. I've seen a lot of pictures of reproductions but I haven't been able to track down a picture of the original. I do have a couple of Limbert catalogs but they are all drawn, no photos. So while the dimensions are correct I can't call this an accurate reproduction. I've made five of these before and its one of my favorite forms. I like the long sweeping legs and the subtle in curve at the bottom of the leg. The top and middle shelf are both 12 inches in diameter, the picture on the left has a top at 14 inches by request of the customer.

This is a nice quick little project it can be completed in a weekend, but of course, the finishing takes a few days due to drying times. You need some nicely figured Quartersawn White Oak that is at least 7 inches wide. I had previously made a template for this form that you see here. I cut 4 pieces of QSWO 28 inches long and traced the pattern making sure to line it up on a square side.

Before I cut the outlines on the bandsaw I had to run a 3/8 x3/8 inch rabbet along the straight edge, more on that later. With all the legs rough cut I used double sided turner's tape to hold the pattern to the leg. I learned the hard way not to try to cheap out and save tape by trying to tape it to the pattern and reuse it. The pattern shifted and I lost one leg on a previous build. I used a pattern routing bit on the router table to finish the shape on the legs.

This is why you run the rabbet on the legs, I call this joint the "crazy rabbet" its an elegant way to join all 4 legs. Popular Woodworking used this joint building a version of a Limbert #238 table.

Here are the legs dry fitted for the first time if the stock is straight and square and your cuts are true, you can put it together like this using the "crazy rabbet" without any clamps for a dry fit. I used the off cuts from the legs to glue up 2 blanks for the tops.

Once the glue has dried on the blanks I used a trammel to mark a 12 inch diameter circle then took them to the bandsaw and cut just proud of the line.

Placing a shop made circle cutting jig on my tablesaw and installing a 1/2 inch spiral cutting bit I adjusted the jig to 6 inches from the bit. I drilled a 1/4 inch hole into the center mark of the top and the shelf careful not to drill all the way through, and careful not to drill in from the best face. I placed the circle blank onto a 1/4 inch bolt that protrudes through the circle cutting jig, and adjusted the jig so that the bit was clear from the wood. I usually remember to cut a little closer to the line of the circle in one spot while at the bandsaw so that the bit can spin clear. I then carefully rotated the blank slowly around until complete, I then move the jig slightly closer and repeat until the circle it complete. This operation is tricky and if the bit catches the grain it can tear off a chunk or even more scary it can grab the blank and spin it. When I'm rotating the blank I keep my right hand pressing down to control it and carefully move it around with my left hand. I use the back of the table for this operation so I have a lot of table between me and the bit.

The final dry fit after sanding showing the rabbets, no pressure or clamps used here.

Another view of the bottom showing the shelf inserted. One thing I didn't show is that shelf has 4 cutouts to match the cutouts on the legs.

The final dry fit with the top placed on. A little glue is all it takes to complete the table, at which time I'll clamp it till it dries. The top is held on with a few figure 8 table irons, or if you want you can drill a 1/4 inch hole in the center of the top of the legs and use a dowel and a little glue, the top is small enough that wood movement shouldn't be a problem. This little table is great for a corner to hold a vase and flowers, or a fern if you really want....

"I would rather be able to appreciate things I can not have than to have things I am not able to appreciate." - Elbert Hubbard

Sometimes a River.

2008-08-09T22:28:00.004-04:00

Sitting on a big rock looking down at the Colorado River as it runs past Moab, Utah, I put in my earbuds and find one of my favorite songs on my iPhone:

I was cleaning the ash from the fire
and putting the party away
helping out all of my lost friends
to see the light of day
I was feeling the wind through the windows
Sometimes it crashed through the wall
seems like it comes out of nowhere
there's no warning at all
chorus
sometimes a river
sometimes a river runs dry
sometimes a river
sometimes a river runs high
I was making my way through a movie
finding it hard to decide
sometimes it hits without warning
and turns me over inside
making a stab in the darkness
wearing a hole in the floor
suddenly everything changes
your not the same as before
sometimes a river
sometimes a river runs dry
sometimes a river
sometimes a river runs high
you danced in my dream in a white dress
I watched from the top of the stairs
I woke up looking to find you
but you were not there
17 hours of driving
but that's not a surprise
the worlds all heavy with traffic
they never were good at goodbyes
no we never were good at goodbyes
sometimes a river
sometimes a river runs dry
sometimes a river
sometimes a river runs high

By, The StringCheese Incident

Siting there taking it all in I thought about how the river is a metaphor for life, and how much I liked listening to this song while sitting next to the river watching the water flow around and over rocks. The water seems to move around and over the rocks effortlessly while to get up on this rock I had to fight gravity and the heat, but then I realized that the water wasn't fighting gravity but was being pulled along by it. While it seems like the rocks are permanent, the water wears them down grain by grain.

I wanted to create a piece of furniture that brings these concepts and memories into my home. I've seen tables with river rocks inlaid into them so that's an easy addition to the design. I've often thought that Curly Maple with the grain and the curl looks like water flowing, and I have some very nice Quartersawn White oak that's a nice mellow brown just like the terrain along the Colorado River.

The QSWO is 5/4 and the Maple is 4/4, instead of using an inlay or veneer I'm planning on cutting a wide dado on each side of the "river" and overlaying it on top of the Maple. I'll cut curves in the QSWO that will be the banks of the river and route a round over along it. I plan on carving a recess to hold the rocks so that it looks like they are sticking out of the water. The grain on the maple will represent the currents of the river and the curl the rapids. This is the concept put together in a small scale. The River will run between two banks. I can only hope that the design I have in my head can be be translated into wood.

sometimes a river,
sometimes a river runs dry.
sometimes a river,
sometimes a river runs high.

The StringCheese Incident

Wooden iPhone cases

2008-08-06T21:09:00.005-04:00

Something else interesting I found online that I thought you'd like to see, MJ Dinsmore is making and selling wooden cases for the iPhone, iPods, and Nano's at his Etsy site .

This first picture is a case for a Nano, its made from mahogany with sliding dovetail ends.

His iPhone case in Mahogany with inlaid stripe. From his site;

"Go green by buying brown -- brown wood versus wrapping your iPod in harsh plastic. It has two coats of danish oil and three coats of hand rubbed Carnauba wax for the finish."

I think its cool and very nice looking, but if you have an iPhone, you hardly ever put it away, so who needs a case? But if you want to keep your iPod from getting scratched in your bag its a very elegant solution.

"A man is as good as he has to be, and a woman as bad as she dares. " - Elbert Hubbard

Grain Wooden Surfboards

2008-08-05T20:56:00.003-04:00

While surfing around on the internet I come across some very interesting things, some of which are appropriate to share with you. This is such a find, http://www.grainsurfboards.com/, Grain Surfboards based in Maine, builds hollow core wooden surfboards.
These babies are all wood, not a foam blank veneered with wood
and called a woodie. These boards are built with an internal structure much like an airplane wing, then covered with wood strips and then fiberglass. They make production and custom boards and they make kits. These pics are from one such adventurous person on the Grain Surfboard Flickr site. They say in the instructions that no woodworking experience is needed... yeah, right. They also list a limited number of tools that are needed.

From their FAQ page here's what comes in a kit:

Each kit comes with all the material you need to build your
own board including: board frame, cedar planks and rail strips, wood scraps
(sized for tail blocks, and minor structural blocking), fin box, leash plug,
waterproof glue, fiberglass, and more. Epoxy, squeegee, mixing buckets and
rubber gloves are sent directly from MAS Epoxy to save shipping costs. A
detailed 40-page instruction manual tells you how to assemble it all. Our kits
are put together by hand in Maine from locally grown, sustainably harvested
northern white cedar and a small amount of red cedar for color variation. You
will find planks numbered in a suggested pattern and marked “top”, “bottom”,
“nose” and “tail”. The rail strips are already milled with a nose and cove that
allows them to work around the rails (see the manual).

This idea is interesting, I really would love to make one, I'll put it on the list along with strip built Kayak and Canoe.

From their website on why wood:

Wood Is Good
Wooden surfboards are not a new idea! For hundreds of years, surfboards were solid pieces of wood, hand-hewn from logs. These boards were very heavy and this weight often hindered their performance. We think of our boards as a natural blend of traditional craftsmanship with modern day, more performance oriented designs.
We craft our boards one at a time using predominantely Northern White Cedar, with some Western Red Cedar thrown in for color. The Northern White Cedar comes from sustainable forestry professionals, which means there will be plenty of wood for our boards in the future. These tree length logs are sawn using age-old proven equipment, producing the highest quality boards. The wood is then dried, planed, quality inspected and stored on site. By choosing this wood, we’re supporting small, family owned sawmills right here in Maine. White Cedar is super light, extremely rot-resistant and beautiful to look at. What else could you ask for when building a surfboard? The natural qualities of these tight-grained woods ensure durability, strength, and lightweight rideability for many years.
Many big name surfboard manufacturers are now producing foam boards with a thin veneer to replicate wooden boards. While foam boards have earned a place in the surfing world, you need to remember that foam was not introduced to the sport because of its benefits to the surfer, but because of it’s benefits to the manufacturer.
Once you try a wooden board, you may never go back to foam. You’ll discover that wooden surfboards ride with more energy and carry more momentum down the wave. And while they may seem slightly heavier on land, in water, they feel much lighter due to the inherent buoyancy of wood. A well-constructed wooden board will feel solid underfoot but also transmits a pleasing softness like nothing you’ve ever experienced on a foam board. Wave after wave you’ll find new ways to praise its qualities. Wood is just good.

If you like this and decide to build one, please share pictures with me.

It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see. Henry David Thoreau

Islands coffee table, Part 2

2008-08-03T19:57:00.012-04:00

This weekend saw a marathon session of MDF pattern routing to finish the Islands Table. I had started with the islands to work on the process, I have to say that I am very pleased with the way they turned out. I started working on the main table this weekend and the process was a little bit different. The coast line extends around one side of the table but the design calls for only part of it to go all the way to the floor. What I did was to draw out the coastline on a sheet of posterboard and when I was happy with it I transferred it to a 1/2 inch sheet of MDF. After cleaning up the saw marks and fairing some of the curves I traced the pattern onto 3 pieces of 3/4 MDF. To save some weight I cut a rectangle out of the back of the pieces when I trimmed the waste away. Since the pattern is on the bottom I switched to a hand router to cut these three pieces. I then took a smaller piece of 1/2 inch MDF and traced the corner. I cut the waste on the bandsaw and temporarily attached it to the coast line and using the handheld router I cut it to match that part of the top. Now I have a pattern that will be the bottom of the leg. I traced the pattern onto 17 pieces of 3/4 inch MDF and proceeded to pattern route them on the routertable. When they were complete I needed a way to line up the top with the leg once it gets to its destination. I drilled three 1/4 inch holes about 1 inch deep into the bottom of the top ( ok that doesn't sound right but it makes sense to me) and used a couple dowel points to transfer the center marks to the leg. Then I inserted two dowels and put a dowel point into the third hole. Now when Dan gets it all he'll have to do is spread some glue on the leg and slide it onto the dowels.

The other 3 legs are square made from 3/4 inch MDF with a tenon made from 1/2 inch MDF, these are designed to slide into a mortise built up onto the top and sides. Again, just a little glue on the tenons and shoulders and slide them into the mortises.

I ripped some 3/4 inch MDF to 2 1/4 inch to match the hieght of the coast line. These were glued and pinned to the top with brad nails. I added a glue block to give extra support to the side where it met the coast here.

Here it is ladies and gentlemen, the complete Islands coffee table, I think it turned out great considering we were working from just 2 pictures. I did some experimenting with some scrap pieces and it seems that vinyl spackle spread thinly over the edges then sanded smooth will leave a very smooth base for painting.

The blue tape is just to hold the leg into the mortise while it was on its side and I was inserting the other legs and turning it right side up.

I don't know if you can see it in the pictures but I used my small edge trimmer router and a camfering bit and gave it a 1/16th inch 45 degree camfer around the top and bottom to keep the edges from being pulled up. My work is done, its up to Dan now to make sure that it gets a good finish and a nice paint job.

'A little simplification would be the first step toward rational living, I think.'

Eleanor Roosevelt

Dr. Powertool, or, how I stopped worrying and learned to love handtools

2008-07-30T21:38:00.005-04:00

Hi, I'm Brad and I'm a Normite.... that's right, like all of you I am a powertool driven, bought a biscuit joiner, have a dedicated mortiser, have 4 routers Normite. But I'm recovering, over the last few years I've been converted to quality hand tools.

I've been watching The New Yankee Workshop every Saturday morning for years. I guess you could say that its replaced my Saturday morning cartoons. Over time I grew to have serious shop envy. I wanted a big shop with a huge tablesaw, a stationary tool for every operation and a brad nailer, oh how I wanted a brad nailer. But, alas, I had a house in Downtown Charleston with no garage and no space for one. I worked out in the driveway and used all portable tools, but they were power tools. Don't get me wrong, I had chisels, Stanley Chisels that had never seen a wetstone. I had a block plane that I got from the local True Value, it was a Stanley, but by this time, all Stanley made that was any good would be garage door openers.

I found a nice house on the island with room for a shop... a shop.... oh how happy I was. I built my shop, after lots of drawings and using the shop planner tool on the Grizzly tools site at least once a week. The shop turned out great, just what I wanted. I filled it with all the power tools that I'd been planning over those long years of shop lust. I ran a dust collection system, lots of power outlets, I built some ugly cabinets and made a big assembly table. I even sharpened my chisels.

Well, oddly enough, the Internet brought me to hand tools, well that and the magazines. I saw people using hand tools and read about techniques. I even got some decent chisels free from Dewalt with a combo router kit, they were actually Marples but in black with the Dewalt logo. I started getting saws, a Japanese saw, a flush saw, a gent's saw. But the true conversion came when I got my first Lie-Nielsen plane, it was a low angle shoulder plane that I picked up at Woodcraft to clean up the junk that the tablesaw left on my tenon's shoulders. It was like that scene in The Holy Grail when the clouds open up to Arthur and the voice of God talks to him. That plane, right out of the box, cut shavings that you could see through. It felt so good in my hand, heavy, solid, SHARP!! That was it, I had seen the light, my eyes were opened.

This winter I got a sharpening system, now all my irons and chisels are razor sharp, even that crappy old Stanley Block plane cut ok. I think I turned a corner this summer when I made my first wooden plane. I really can feel this plane move through the wood. I decided to replace that POS block plane that never holds a setting with a Lie-Nielsen low angle block plane. I love the heavy blade and the solid brass parts. I ground a microbevel on the blade and stropped it on a leather wheel, rubbed little wax on the bottom and zzzzzzooooommmmmmm.

I finally treated myself to a nice set of chisels, I ordered these Two Cherries babies through The WoodWhisperer's Amazon site. They are sharp and shiny and in a nice box. I could feel a burr on each bevel so I hit them with a very fine grit at 25 degrees and a microbevel at 30 degrees, and on the flat. I then stropped both sides on the leather wheel with some green compound.

Now, all that said and done don't come asking me to sell you my Powermatic Mortiser or my Leigh Dovetail jig, I still need my power tools, but there are times when its easier and FASTER, to use a hand tool to do something then to set up and run a power tool. If I have a dresser full of drawers I'll take the time to set up the Leigh Jig and Router, but if I have one drawer in a wall cabinet, it time to hand cut. I'll still cut my tenons on the tablesaw, but I'll trim them to that perfect fit with a shoulder plane. I'll still cut my mortises on the mortiser, but cleaning them up is now a breeze, and the through mortises are cut on the outside with the chisels. If I just have one or two mortises, its the drill press and the chisels.

Thank you to everyone that has helped me overcome my addiction and move along the road to being a better craftsman. I end with this simple prayer.

God grant me the serenity to accept the time I have to use powertools;

courage to use hand tools when I should;

and wisdom to know the difference.

Islands coffee table

2008-07-26T21:02:00.009-04:00

This project is quite a departure for me, as most of you know, I usually make arts and crafts reproductions, this is a very modern design and its made entirely from MDF. Dan brought me the picture to the left and asked if I could make something like it. We went into the shop and started playing around and discovered that I could but not out of solid wood.

What I decided I would have to do is to start with a posterboard pattern with inside curves no tighter than 1/2 inch. This is the limit because I wanted to use a 1/2 inch flush trim bit in my router table.

To start I make a pattern out of 1/2 inch MDF on the band saw, I used the oscillating spindle sander to clean up the sawmarks and to smooth out the curves. Once the final pattern is complete I transfer it to 3/4 inch MDF 20 times, and once more to 1/2 inch MDF, this will give me a total height of 16 inches when complete. I rough cut the outlines on the band saw staying at least 1/8th inch off the line. It seems like a lot of work but cutting each one took less than a minute.
I glued the rough cut to the pattern and held it in place with a few Brad nails.... I know I know... I feel kind of dirty...

Since I have a 2 inch long flush trim bit I was able to glue and nail 2 of the rough pieces to the pattern, this makes the whole process go twice as fast . Here you see the bearing of the flush trim bit running on the pattern while the entire thickness of the rough pieces will contact the router blades.

I repeat the process of glueing and nailing two more rough blanks to the routed piece, the pattern bit bearing now will ride on the bottom of the area that was just routed.

As you can see the stack gets rather high rather quickly, it also gets rather heavy. I considered hollowing out the center pieces to reduce the weight but decided that the weight would add stability to the tall narrow "islands".

Here they are, the two islands ready to send off to Dan. They are pretty smooth after the routing but the bearing on the bit tends to indent the edges of the MDF, he'll need to hand sand the edges, prior to priming and painting them. These were the easy parts, now comes the tabletop with its own "shoreline" that will be made using the same process. I'll be able to make the legs, top and sides partially buy building "boxes" out of MDF", this should save some weight and some time, but it still needs to be strong enough to support the "shoreline", there is still some engineering before I start that build.

"A little thought and a little kindness are often worth more than a great deal of money."

John Ruskin

Stickley Coat Rack, Part 3, the end.

2008-07-20T20:17:00.004-04:00

Today I completed the Stickley Coat Rack and took it over to my neighbor so that she could take it to her office. It turned out very nice and it was fun to make.

I installed some nice large antiqued bronze coat hooks, three on each side just like the original.

I used my favorite finishing recipe for arts and crafts furniture.

Sand piece to 150 grit and clean with tack rag or vacuum.
Wipe a good coat of dye on, be sure to cover all sides and keep dye from puddling in corners and at base. Leave to dry for at least 24 hours.
Lightly sand to remove raised grain with 220 grit, avoid oversanding especially at corners and edges.
Pad on a 1LB cut of amber shellac or sanding sealer.
Using a 320 grit sanding pad gently rub surface, clean with tack cloth or vacuum.
Apply Brown Mahogany Gel stain being careful to not cover too large of an area because once dry its very hard to wipe off. Once the gel starts to haze rub it off with a clean lint free cloth, I prefer old T-shirts. This gives you a warm rubbed in look. Let dry overnight.
Pad on 2-3 2LB cut coats of amber shellac, I tightly fold a square of T-shirt material, then soak it in the shellac and squeeze out excess, rub it in until it starts to drag then let dry. The coat of shellac should dry in 30 minutes or less. Repeat until you get the build you want.
Again, using 320 grit sanding pad gently rub surface, clean with a tack cloth or vacuum.
Take a few minutes to go over the whole piece with your clean hand, checking the surface for any rough areas or holidays.
Using a clean square of T-shirt rub in a thick coat of Watco Dark Liquid wax. Avoid plain or light colored waxes as these may leave white residue in the pores of the oak. When the wax is dry buff it out with a clean square of T-shirt.

I posted this in February but I wanted to revisit it because its been a while and people in the Woodwhisperer chat room have been asking me about it recently. As a reward for myself I picked up a L-N low angle block plane when I visited Woodcraft today, I've been wanting one for a while now.

Stickley Coat Rack, Part 2

2008-07-12T22:06:00.011-04:00

This weekend's post starts with a little therapeutic planing Friday afternoon. I didn't have a lot of time but I really wanted to get in the shop and do something. I don't have any pictures but I planed the tapers on the uprights. The neat thing is that the best plane for this ended up being a wooden plane that I've been working on. My block plane is a little too narrow and my Stanley No. 4 wasn't holding a setting for some reason, so I pulled out my wooden smoothing plane, set the blade with a few taps on the wedge and went too it, next thing I know I'm ankle deep in shavings and the tapers are done. I'm really excited about this as this is the very first plane that I've tried to make. I've been playing with it, trying to decide the best shape for my hands. This was a great test and showed me some places on the plane where I want to adjust the shape.

Today I started with shaping the ends of the tenons, I mark a line around the tenon where it pokes out of the through mortise. I hold the pencil up a little about 1/16th of an inch and mark the line all the way around. After disassembly I mark a line down the center of the end of the tenon and a line on each end 1/2 the width of the tenon.

I use these lines as guides as I block plane the pyramid shape on the end of the tenon. I cut the ends first to avoid blowout. I then ran the block plane set a very thin shaving over the sides several times until I reached both lines. I turned the piece around in the vise and repeated the procedure. Repeating this for both sides of both cross pieces.

The next step is the joinery to attach the feet to the uprights of the coatrack. This operation is done on the routertable, I used a 1/2 inch mortising bit to remove the bulk of the material, testing the setting of the fence and checking using a scrap piece. The router bit is trapped inside the stock so stock control is very important. I used a stop block screwed to the fence of the router table to stop at proper spot and a feather board to hold the stock against the fence.
I then switched to a 14 degree 3/4 inch wide dovetail bit. After setting the depth and the fence and reinstalling the featherboard I ran the uprights past the bit easily. Here you have to remember that you can't lift the stock off the bit, you have to pull the stock back along the route it traveled.

Leaving the bit in place and at the same depth I pull the fence back and attack a sacrificial piece of 1/2 inch MDF to be used as a zero clearance fence. I then sneak up on the correct setting buy eye, run a scrap piece through cutting both sides and checking it, making the adjustment I need, again by eye, and re-running the scrap. Using this method I can usually get dead on in two or three adjustments, and its much easier then trying to measure and subtrack then adjusting the fence while measuring off the bit.

After the sliding dovetails are cut on the stock I cut the pattern that I had marked on the feet last weekend on the bandsaw. I then cut the excess dovetail from the top of the foot with a handsaw then shape the end to match the round end of the socket.

First I round the end with a sharp chisel, usually I just have to pare the endgrain off and remove the waste.

Next I undercut the end to match the angle of the dovetail while keeping the round shape of the socket

When you are done you should be able to slide the tenon into the socket and run it home with a few blows of a deadblow hammer. If you can't get the sliding dovetail at least half way in by hand its too tight and you need to trim the tenon some. If you slide it all the way in by hand its too loose and you can either start over, or you can fix it by gluing a strip of veneer to each side. I check and double check the tenon fit before I cut the final stock so I won't run into these problems at this step.
What you should end up with is a tight joint and a snug fit with no slop or play in the joint. Once you coat the sliding dovetail in glue it will slide in much easier.

After a final dryfit everyting was pulled apart and sanded at 100-120-150 grit. The feet were cleaned up on the oscillating spindle sander to remove the saw marks from the bandsaw and sanded with the rest of the parts. After a much needed break, its hot in Charleston in July, I glued the cross pieces to the uprights, then the feet to the uprights. The only clamps that were needed were to hold the uprights tight to the cross members.

The final assembly, sanded and glued. Tommorow I'll handsand the whole piece and start the finishing process. Or maybe I'll go to the beach, who knows.

"The early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese." -Steven Wright

Stickley Coat Rack, Part 1

2008-07-07T21:31:00.009-04:00

This weekend began the Stickley Coat Rack from the previous post. I spent a lot of time milling the lumber, the 8/4 Quartersawn White Oak that I had on hand was a little twisted and cupped so it began with a lot of work on the Joiner and with a Jack plane. Once it was close I ripped the stock down to just over 2 inches wide then let it sit flat on my workbench over night. The next day started with more passes on the joiner and to my surprise I ended up with two true square boards 1 3/4 x 1 3/4 x 72 inches.

I also milled some stock 1 1/2 inches thick for the feet and two pieces of 5/4 for the stretchers.

I made templates for the feet and the taper at the top of the posts out of some 1/2 MDF. I transferred the shapes onto the stock so that after the joinery I can cut out the shapes on the bandsaw.

The stretchers are through tenons so after cutting mortises through the uprights I cut long tenons on the crosspieces.

Here you can see how I cut the the shoulders off the tenons using the bandsaw.

After a little clean up using a shoulder plane for the tenons and a wide chisel for the mortises I did a dry fit of the stretchers.

Here are the through tenons in place, I marked each one so that I can trim the ends once I take it aparts and sand down the cross pieces.

Here is the dry fit of the of the uprights all done and waiting for me to come back next weekend. I need to decide how I'm going to join the feet to the uprights, shape and sand the feet and the cross stretchers.

"It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see"

Henry David Thoreau

New Project!!!!!

2008-07-01T18:06:00.006-04:00

Slow to get back into the shop after my vacation I was looking around for something that I really wanted to build, my neighbor Michelle is an Audiologist and came to me asking if I could make her a coat rack for her office. She said that she didn't have much wall space and wanted something that would hold a few coats.
I did some looking through my Stickley catalogs and found this. Its called a costumer and may have been originally intended to go in a bed room instead of the hall way but I think it will work great and looks really cool. I like the double tree design and it fits her requirement or not being too wide at 14 inches. The base is 22 inches across so it will only sit out 10 inches from the wall.

I only had to small pictures from my books and no plans so I searched around on the internet and found these pictures and more that show details such as the through tenons for the stretchers. I've also found some hardware that was close to these. What I have to figure out is how the base and the uprights are attached, I could either cut a deep bridle joint on the uprights or use a mortise and tenon joint on each foot. The rest is pretty straight forward. Any thoughts on the joinery for the bottom would be greatly appreciated.

"Do your work with your whole heart, and you will succeed - there's so little competition."

Elbert Hubbard

Vacation in Moab, or Why you haven't seen any woodworking posts

2008-06-17T00:03:00.008-04:00

In case you're wondering why I haven't been in the shop lately I'm on vacation in Moab, Utah with Pam and my brother and his family.

One of the beauties of Moab is Arches National Park, Delicate Arch that you see here is on the Utah lisence plates.

Sunday we hiked (climbed) up to Delicate Arch, its listed as a strenuous hike, no kidding. It was 100 degrees here in the valley but up on the LaSal Mountains you can still see the snow covered peaks.

My family early on in the hike when we still weren't beaten down by the sun, the nice part for us coming from the coastal south is that there is only 7% humidity here, at home its more like 100 degrees and 90% humidity.

Monday was the great Moab Jeep Adventure for my brother, his daughter and me. We rented a modified Jeep and took it through Kane Creek Canyon, a trip of 13 miles and 5 hours. You can see why here. Our journey started on a dirt road and digressed from there. We went down into the canyon and followed Kane Creek crossing it 67 times according to the guide book, I didn't count, but I'd say they were close.

This was our view from the start of the trail, we went all the way through that canyon. Following a very narrow trail that was at times well marked and at times confusing. It was sand trails, creek beds, and crossings punctuated by rocky trails strewn with boulders.

This is the view up on of the "trails" we had to climb, it was like this all the way out of the canyon.

My brother and I both used to have Jeeps and have experience off road driving, but this part of the trail tested up both. I don't think my neice was too excited about the ride after the first couple of hours but she was a good sport about it.

The guy that rented up the Jeep told us that the company sells them after a few seasons, ours was a 2006 with only 20,000 miles, thats 20,000 HARD miles. I don't think I'd buy one after the rattling they go through.

After making it out of the canyon and back to Moab for a little rest and to spray the mud off the Jeep we went to the other side of town and tried out some slickrock jeeping on sandstone fins. Here we are on a trail called "Fins and Things", this is the easiest of three descents we had to choose from on this fin. Stay tuned for another update later in the week.

Arts and Crafts Details: Corbels

2008-06-02T20:04:00.003-04:00

This is the first in a series of posts on details of Arts and Crafts Furniture. Today I'm going to focus on the Corbel, its a curved wooden support that goes between the leg and the arm of a chair of sofa.

According to Wikipedia the word "corbel" comes from Old French and derives from the Latin corbellus, a diminutive of corvus (a raven) which refers to the beak-like appearance. Corbel is defined as a piece of stone jutting out of a wall to carry any superincumbent weight. For us, its a decorative addition that ties the arm to the leg.

Gustav Stickley used a small corbel on his morris chairs while his brother's designs used a more elongated corbel as seen here in my reproduction of their Prairie Style Sofa and also below in my L&JG Stickley Paddle arm Morris chair.

There are several ways that you could attach the corbels to your chair/sofa. You could drill through the corbel and screw it into the leg and plug the holes. You could use dowels to attach it. You could glue it directly to the leg/arm like I did on the Morris chair, since its a long grain to long grain match, careful aligning and clamping works well. My favorite method, which I used on the sofa, is to cut a dado down the leg with a router and a guide, and cut a long tongue on the back of the corbel. This method aligns the corbel correctly every time and provides for plenty of glue surfaces.

Once you decide on the size and shape of your corbel make a pattern out of plywood or MDF, trace the shape out on some nicely figured quartersawn white oak, cut on the band saw proud of the line. Attach the pattern to the stock using double sided tape and using a pattern routing bit run them on your router table. A little finish sanding and carefully glue the corbel in place. Nicely shaped and proportioned corbels will add a nice detail to your project.

"It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see." - Henry David Thoreau

Workshop clean up and stuff

2008-06-01T20:49:00.005-04:00

Friday I took the Stickley #913 dresser to the shipper to be crated and shipped up to Charlottesville so I spent some time this weekend cleaning up the shop. Its amazing how things get cluttered and the shavings pile up on the floor while working on a project.

I don't have a new arts and crafts project waiting right away so I'm going to spend some time making some shop aids that I've wanted. I want to make a shop stool, resurface my assembly table and try my hand at making some wooden hand planes.

I have been talking to a friend that wants me to help him make a coffee table with an interesting modern design, its going to be made out of MDF and I'll probably break out my Brad nailer for it too, so I don't want to get any grief from you Woodwhisperer regulars. It does feel a little "HGTV" but its going to look cool when its done.

Stickley #913 Harvey Ellis Dresser, Part Last

2008-05-24T22:53:00.005-04:00

Well today was the day, this project if finally done. I have to say that this has been the most complex build I've even done. It was my first dresser and I learned some important lessons about making drawers. I had done my research on drawers and dressers and most of the experts said to cut the drawer faces to fit the carcass, then cut the dovetails, and plane them to fit. I think next time I am going to cut them to the size I want which would be the opening minus 1/16th of an inch all the way around for clearance. I ended up having to plane the sides of each drawer, spending about 6 hours fitting the drawers. They do fit nicely now, but while cutting them smaller to start won't give you that "piston fit" described in the literature it would save quite a bit of time and inches of plane shavings from the shop floor.

I ended up not needing center drawer guides with the snug fit of the drawers but I did install stops on the rear drawer rails to keep the drawers closing flush to the frame.

One more coat of Danish oil tomorrow and let it dry for a few days, finish with a coat of clear wax and its ready to be crated and shipped off.

The contrast between the dark, rich cherry and the light highly figured curly maple make this a very pretty piece. The cherry knobs bring it all together, tying the drawers to the carcass nicely. The knobs on the bottom drawers will darken to match the top ones that have been getting sunlight for a few weeks while the bottom knobs sat on my countertop in the back of the shop.

This piece was originally designed by Harvey Ellis in his short but fruitful tenure with Gustav Stickley and has been produced by the Stickley company in its various itterations since then. The original was made in Quartersawn White Oak with a back splash on the top. This version is closer to the modern product produced by the Stickley Company.

I hope it finds many years of use in its new home, it was fun to make and quite the learning experience. Now for something less complex and a little easier......

"Happiness is not a goal; it is a by-product." Eleanor Roosevelt

A Quick Little Push Block

2008-05-24T21:55:00.006-04:00

What do you do with a nice piece of hard maple that's only 12 inches long but its 8 inches wide and a full inch thick? Not enough to make a cabinet, certainly not enough to build a bridge out of.

I need another push block, maybe I could make one out of this. I like the feel of an enclosed handle that pushes down on the stock so instead of reinventing the wheel I used this push block as a guide.

After tracing the hand hole in its proper position I freehanded the shape I had in mind and added some ears to make the handle more like a saw handle.

A trip to the bandsaw cut out the shape. I cleaned up the saw blade marks with the disc sander for the convex part and the oscillating spindle sander for the concave parts. I used a 1 1/4 inch forstner bit to bore out the hand hole.

Some clean up with a chisel and a trip over to the oscillating spindle sander leaves a nice smooth finger hole, just the right size for a safe grip.

Using a 1/2 inch roundover bit I eased the inside of the handle and the palm side, I was careful not to go past the ears with the bit.

Who says that even totally utilitarian things you use in your shop shouldn't be beautiful, and I had a cabinet full of router bits, so I put a decorative beading on the edge of the push block. You'll also notice the foot I cut into the push block, at first I was going to glue on a block like I did on my other pushblock. But once the beaded detail was in place I decided to keep it simple and cut the foot on the band saw. If the foot becomes chewed up cutting thin strips I'll just slice it off and cut another one the same way, there is enough material on this push block to do that a few times before I have to replace it.

A few coats of Danish oil and its done, all in all I spent 45 minutes on this pushblock. It will keep my fingers away from the tablesaw blade and look good while its doing it.

"The smell of wood in my shop is more pleasing than a desk in an office." Sam Maloof

Stickley #913 Harvey Ellis Dresser, Part 6

2008-05-10T17:25:00.004-04:00

Its funny how life sometimes interferes with the things we want to do. I was really hoping that this weekend would see the final touches for the Harvey Ellis Dresser but as I said, life has a way of getting in the way. I won't laundry list the things that kept me out of the shop last weekend and today but I wanted to tell you about a good friend of mine that left us last weekend.

Griffon was my 15 year old Australian Sheppard and he had been suffering from an inner ear infection for two weeks, his vet did everything that they could but he just didn't recover from it. Finally last Saturday he started refusing all food and water. He had lost 15 lbs in two weeks and couldn't keep up on his feet. Griffon was a very kind soul that was loved by everyone that met him. I have never had a more gentle dog. He loved cats and little kids, and anytime he met a dog he would pull to go over and say hi. His very favorite thing was to get his belly rubbed, and amazingly enough he would go out on the screened in porch through the cat door. I'm sure that right now he's rolling in the grass up in doggie heaven.

I did get some woodworking done since my last post, I planed the maple for the drawer sides to 5/8 inches thick and cut the sides and back for the two smallest of the large drawers. I had to glue up the sides for the 9 1/2 inch drawer. I cut the dovetails for the 8 drawer and today I sanded the inside and glued it up. Maybe tomorrow I'll get the other two drawers glued up but then I'm off to San Francisco for a week for work, so that shoots next weekend all to heck too. But I promise you that this thing will be done, oiled and waxed, and shipped off before Memorial Day. I wonder what I'm going to make next. I haven't really given it much thought yet, but I think its time for something small. This has been the longest, most complex build yet, but its coming out great.

God will not look you over for medals degrees or diplomas, but for scars. Elbert Hubbard

Safety Week Post Safety Glasses for us that wear Glasses

2008-05-02T22:45:00.008-04:00

"Be sure to read, understand, and follow all the safety rules that come with your power tools. Knowing how to use your power tools properly will greatly reduce the risk of personal injury. And remember this: there is no more important safety rule than to wear these-- safety glasses."

Well if you wear glasses anyway do you need safety glasses? Well.... yes, your glasses may help you see better but are they designed to protect your eyes? Here's something you should consider when thinking about eye safety.

Consider frames with side shields, which protect against objects coming at the eyes from an angle, as well as from the front.

The frames should be made of impact-resistant plastic or polycarbonate.

For cold weather wear, look for frames made of nylon, rubber or propionate, which do not become brittle in the cold, hold their shape, and are less likely to injure the face in a fall or when something strikes them.

Titanium is an unusually tough metal used in some sports eyeglasses.

Wrap-around temples keep the frame more firmly in place.

Spring hinges allow the frame to flex without breaking

When considering which safety glasses to purchase keep the ANSI Z87.1 standard in mind. The ANSI Z87.1 standard sets forth requirements for the design, construction, testing, and use of eye protection devices, including standards for impact and penetration resistance. All safety glasses, goggles, and face shields used by employees under OSHA jurisdiction must meet the ANSI Z87.1 standard. The eyewear standard includes the following minimum requirements:

Provide adequate protection against the hazards for which they are designed

Be reasonably comfortable

Fit securely, without interfering with movement or vision

Be capable of being disinfected if necessary, and be easy to clean

Be durable

Fit over, or incorporate, prescription eyewear

Now your safety glasses no longer have to look like the ones that your shop teacher wore along with his short sleeved plaid shirt and bad tie probably including pocket protector that he never seemed to take off even when you saw him outside of school. They can look just as cool as the ones sported by your normally sighted friends. You can even order them online, all you need is your prescription and pupil distance from your last eye exam. I would highly recommend getting some comfortable, cool looking safety glasses because you'll wear them, I tried all kinds of "over glasses" type of safety glasses before I got my prescription and none of them were comfortable so I ended up not wearing them.

My regular everyday glasses do have plastic lenses but they are small and there is no side protection. They offer more protection than wearing nothing but they are not safety glasses. Many woodworkers would spend thousands on a Sawstop and you have ten fingers, loose a few and you can still build nice furniture, but you only have two eyes... Safety Glasses are cheap.

"It is not fair to ask of others what you are not willing to do yourself." Eleanor Roosevelt

Stickley #913 Harvey Ellis Dresser, Quick update

2008-04-28T19:45:00.003-04:00

Sunday I didn't have alot of time in the shop but there was something I wanted to do. I finish sanded each of the small drawers inside and out. I hand sanded the drawer fronts to 220 grit. I marked the center of the drawers and drilled a hole for the 2 inch cherry pulls.

Once the pulls were installed I applied a coat of Danish oil on the drawer fronts. The oil turned the cherry knobs the same tone as the carcass and really brought out the curl in the maple. I liked the look so much that I had to take some pictures and make a quick update. So click on the pictures on the left for a larger version.

Hope you have a nice week.

"Be kind whenever possible. It is always possible."

Dalai Lama

Stickley #913 Harvey Ellis Dresser, Part 5

2008-04-26T21:04:00.007-04:00

This week's post covers a few days, my mother is visiting and I took the week off from work to spend some time with her but there was some time for playing in the shop.

The first thing I did was to make the back panel for the dresser, I could have used one piece of plywood or I could have made it out of ship lapped boards but keeping with the two tone look of the piece I decided to go with a frame and panel. I cut the rails and stiles to length and ran a 1/4 inch x 1/2 inch groove one one side of each and a groove on each side of the center stile. I cut 1/2 inch long tenons on the sides of the stiles to fit in the grooves of the rails. A little glue and some clamps and Bob's your uncle.

Once dry and sanded I couple of coats of Danish oil to match the carcass were applied. I need access to the inside to install and adjust the drawer guides so I drilled a few countersunk screw holes in the sides and screwed the back to the carcass.

These are the fronts for the drawers cut and trimmed to size layed out and marked for position. I was lucky enough to find a wide board of curly maple long enough to get all three of the bottom drawers from. The top 6 drawers also came from one board. I used maple for the drawer sides and for the smaller drawers I went with 3/8 inch thick stock that I had resawn from 4/4 stock.

I set up the half blind dovetails on my Leigh Dovetail Jig, what you see here is the new Leigh Vacuum Router Support that attaches to the shopvac and captures most of the shavings from the router. Before when I routed dovetails with the jig I would end up standing in a pile of sawdust, I have to say that this is a very useful addition to the Leigh system.

Once all the dovetails were routed, half blind for the front and through dovetails for the rear, I cut a 1/4 inch groove around the bottom inside of the pieces. I then sized 1/4 inch birch plywood to fit inside the grooves. Once everything was sanded I glued up the drawers using blocks to distribute the force of the clamps.

Here we have all six drawers, sanded, glued and clamped standing in line like good little drawers.
The nice thing was that the dovetail jig only had to be set up once and I was able to route all six drawers, with the larger drawers each one is a different height so the jig has to be set up for each one.

Today I unclamped the drawers and planed and sanded the dovetails flush. The large benchtop belt sander made quick work of flushing the back through dovetails. I then planed each the sides of each drawer to fit.

I wanted a tight fit on the drawers so I made the front and sides full height of the openings and planed each one to fit. Once all six drawers had been fit I was left with a nice pile of very thin maple shavings. Thank goodness for sharp tools.

The end product all fit and sliding nicely, a little finish sanding and a couple of coats of natural Danish Oil and this is going to look fantastic. The drawers are all going to receive 2 inch round cherry pulls. Three more drawers and a little bit of finish and this one is done.

"It is not how much one makes but to what purpose one spends."

John Ruskin

Stickley #913 Harvey Ellis Dresser, Part 4

2008-04-20T19:31:00.003-04:00

There aren't a lot of pictures for this post because most of the time was spent sanding, to be specific, hand blocking all the sides of the carcass and the top to prepare for the first coat of Watco Danish Oil. I went over everything with a quarter sheet palm sander with 180 grit sand paper after last week sanding to 150 grit with a random orbit sander. I followed the palm sander with 220 grit hand sanding.

I started Oiling the piece by coating the top by itself and setting it out in the sun to soak up some UV. I then used a foam brush to flood a generous coating of oil over the surface of the carcass, a few minutes later I looked for dry spots and recoated them. After an hour I took an old t-shirt and wiped off the excess oil. I love this part, when you rub each inch of the wood, seeing the grain highlighted by soaking up the oil, feeling the smoothness of the panels and the sharp angles of the edge.

Once the oil was wiped off and is dry to the touch I attached the top to the sides using three pocket screws on each side. I had elongated the screw holes prior to finishing the piece, this will allow the top to move with expansion and contraction of the wood.

Once the top was attached I flooded on another coat of oil and this time left it for 15 minutes before wiping off as per the instructions on the can. You can really tell that the amount of oil needed to cover the surface is significantly less. One reason I really like this finish is the way it leaves the piece feeling, smooth and silky but not overcoated and plastic. When everything is finished and I have the final coats of oil on and dried I will rub on a coat of clear liquid wax to give it a really smooth "hand".
I covered the dresser with a soft flannel sheet and cut the dadoes for the back panel. I also cut the tenons for the rails for the back panel. I trimmed the tenons with a small shoulder plane until I got a perfect slip fit. I glued it up and set it aside to dry. The back panel will be screwed in place and later will be glued in place to add a lot of rigidity to the carcass but for now I need access to the back of the drawer supports to fit the center drawer guides once the drawers are completed.

I also took the time today to rough cut the curly maple for the drawer fronts and began some of the milling. Hopefully this week I'll be able to finish milling the stock for the drawers, did I mention that there were nine drawers, and start on the dovetails.

"He has achieved success who has worked well, laughed often, and loved much."

Elbert Hubbard

Stickley #913 Harvey Ellis Dresser, Part 3

2008-04-13T19:29:00.012-04:00

Well, its the next weekend and sure enough, I got done what I wanted to get done on this project, I think I could have got more done on it but sometimes you just have to work in the yard. That and one of my neighbors was at the Master's and I took care of their dog, and my other neighbors went up to the mountains and I took care of their dogs, yeah and I had to do my taxes...

Ok enough excuses, the truth is this thing is a puzzle and it takes quite a while just to piece it all together. So Saturday I finished the final dryfit with the side drawer guides and the center guides for the top drawers.

You can see the side and center guides here, notice the gap in front of the back drawer rails, this is left to allow for wood movement with the change of seasons. The back tenons will not be glued into the back drawer rails. Once everything was fit it was time to take everything apart for the last time and do some sanding. I started with 100 grit, proceeded to 120 grit, then 150 grit. I stopped there, I plan on hand sanding the rest after glue up.

I had to do some more work on the legs before I sanded them, the first thing I had to do was to cut a stopped rabbet into the backs of the back legs to hold the back panel. I installed the dado blade set to 3/4 inch in the tablesaw and adjusted it to 1/2 inch high. I marked the front and back of the blade on the sacrificial fence and transferred the marks from the stopping point of the rabbet to the opposite side of the legs. One leg I ran until the mark reached the front of the blade then turned off the saw and held the leg until the blade stopped spinning. The other leg I had to carefully lower onto the blade with the mark at the back of the blade and fed it through, I squared up the ends with a chisel. Then I needed to cut a taper in each leg starting at a point 15 9/16th of an inch down from the top. The leg is 2 1/8th wide and tapers to 1 7/8 at the top and 1 3/4 at the bottom. To accomplish this I marked the legs with lines showing the taper on both sides and used my jointer to cut the taper most of the way. This method involves holding back the blade guard and carefully laying the stock down on the running blade with the flush line just post the blade and running the taper over the blade in consecutive passes until the desired taper is achieved. I flipped the leg around and repeated the process for the top taper. I wouldn't recommend trying this technique unless you are comfortable with it as it involves a running machine with exposed blades. I then cleaned the cuts up on the workbench with a number 4 plane and a card scraper.

I also had to cut the tenons on the arched front apron and the mortises in the legs to house them. I cut the mortises with my hollow chisel mortiser, 3/8 inch wide and one inch deep. Using the dado set still in the saw I fit the width into the mortises then cut mortises on both ends one inch wide. Using a gentleman's saw I trimmed the mortises to the correct width and cleaned it up with a sharp chisel.
I used a arch bow that I had made previously to mark the arch in the front apron. I ripped a piece of white oak 1/8th of an inch thick and drilled a small hole in each end and using a string and a sliding adjuster made from the same oak I can adjust the bow to form the correct size arch, I mark a centerline on the board and another line at the limit of the arch. The bow has a mark on its center point so I line those up, after a little adjusting you have the arch you want. I traced this arch and cut it out on the bandsaw, I used the oscillating spindle sander to remove the saw marks. I stopped here for the day.

With all the parts now ready and sanded it was time for the final glue up and let me tell you, I was kind of nervous about getting everything glued, in place, lined up and clamped before the glue set. I guess I could have made a run over to Woodcraft and picked up some slow setting glue but I stuck with my old faithful, regular old Titebond. So it was time to take a deep breath, make sure all my clamps were laid out, a small deadblow hammer was handy, the glue bottle was filled, I had a few glue brushes out and some wipes too. I went over to my iPod, picked out some good glue up music, and cranked it up. A few songs later and the clamps were on, a little adjusting, a clamp diagonally across the top to help square it up and one screw to hole the center divider to the rail below it and it was done. Well almost, I had to glue in some center dividers for the top six drawers, these I just glued and clamped to the center supports.

Now it was done, I turned off the iPod and the lights and walked down the street to talk to my returning friends. After hearing about their adventures watching golf and playing in the mountains I came back, mowed the lawn, played with my dogs then decided it was time to take off the clamps and take some pictures.

"It is not how much one makes but to what purpose one spends." John Ruskin

Stickley #913 Harvey Ellis Dresser, Part 2

2008-04-06T19:31:00.006-04:00

This weekend I continue the Stickley #913 Harvey Ellis Designed 9 drawer dresser. This is the hard part, making the "bones" for the carcass. Cutting the dado's and sliding dovetails in the sides for the front and back drawer rails and the side drawer guides. The thickness of the cherry is 13/16th's of an inch so I couldn't cut the dado's with a 3/4 inch router bit, so what I decided to do was to attach a 3/4 inch outer diameter guide bushing and use a 1/2 inch mortising router bit. I then made a template by ripping two pieces of 1/2 inch plywood 4 inches wide, placing a piece of 1/2 inch MDF that I had ripped to 1 1/16th inch between them, squaring them up and screwing them to two pieces of jointed 1x3 scrap. I then used the MDF pieces to create stops by screwing them to the one by. I set the depth on the router to 1/8th of an inch and cut the stopped dado's that will house the side drawer guides. I then dropped the depth to 1/4 of an inch and routed out a relief so that I could slide in the stopped sliding dovetail joints on the front drawer rails. I then switched to my other router set up with the same size router guide and a 1/2 inch wide dovetail router bit, moved the MDF stop so that the bit stopped 1/2 inch from the front and removed the back stop. I routed the front as a stopped sliding dovetail and the back as a sliding dovetail both 1/4 inch deep.

I then put the same dovetail bit into the router table and used some cut off stock to dial in the width of the dovetail. I then cut dovetails on the ends of the front drawer rails and fit them in place. Once the front was all dry fit included the small drawer rails and the vertical divider ( not easy) I took a break and mowed the grass cause sometimes you just need to walk away from the shop or you just know you are going to make a mistake.

Sunday afternoon I cut the dovetails on the back drawer rails and fit them in place. I also cut the side drawer guides and middle drawer guides and formed the tenons on them. I marked the placement of the mortises so that when I take this puzzle apart I will know where to place them. I have numbered each piece and marked the same numbers on the inside of the joints so that each hand fitted piece will go back in the same location. The tenons on the side drawer runners will be glued into the front drawer guide rails and not glued into the back drawer guide rails to allow them to move with the sides. When I take the carcass apart next I will also cut a rabbet into the back of the legs to hold the back panel. The front arched apron will be mortised into the front legs and the legs will be tapered. All parts will be sanded prior to glue up. Hopefully, next weekend the carcass will be complete and them I can start on the drawers, did i mention that there are nine drawers...... NINE....

"Genius may have its limitations, but stupidity is not thus handicapped."

Elbert Hubbard

Look what I found.

2008-04-01T00:01:00.000-04:00

I was in my local Home Depot today and saw this flyer behind the desk at the tool department so I snatched it to share it with all of you.

I don't know any details more than this but what a deal. I know I can't wait to get mine.

Stickley #913 Harvey Ellis Dresser, Part 1

2008-03-30T21:50:00.007-04:00

Today marks the beginning of the Stickley #913 Harvey Ellis Designed 9 drawer dresser. Like the picture to the left this one is going to be constructed with a cherry carcass and curly maple drawers. I previously purchased the lumber and have had it acclimating in the shop for a couple of weeks, now its time to make some sawdust.

The first thing I wanted to do was to select the best boards for the top and the sides, I specifically looked for interesting grain patterns and lack of knots. I put together one panel just over 36 inches and 20 inches wide for the top. The two sides are seventeen inches wide and 48 inches rough, all three of these panels will be trimmed to size later.

After removing the clamps and scraping off the excess glue I ran the panels through the drum sander to remove any mismatched boards from the glue up and to flatten the panels.

The rest of the carcass parts are ripped to width and rough cut for size, I like to get all my parts together and then cut them to length. This way I can do the rough length cuts on my miter saw then do all the ripping on the table saw with a Freud Glueline Rip Blade, switch over to a crosscut blade and use my extended miter gauge to do the crosscuts.

After the panels have been cut to length I set up the dado blade and cut a 1/4 inch tongue on both side panels this will fit into a 1/4 wide by 1/2 inch deep groove in the legs.

I sanded the legs smooth then chose the two best for the front legs. Once this was done I marked the outer corners and oriented them so I could mark the spacing for the drawer rails and the locations of the grooves. It is important to keep the legs in order when you are marking them out as the layout is rather complex. I used a plunge router with a fence attachment and a 1/4 inch straight bit to cut the grooves in each leg for the side panels. This is the first step for the legs, the front legs will have mortises cut for the drawer rails and the back legs will have a groove for the back panel as well as mortises for the back of the drawer frame. Both sets of legs will be tapered on the outer sides.

After the routing I dry fit the legs onto panels, with a little of fine tuning with a shoulder plane the fit was perfect. The inside of both panels will have a series of dadoes to support the sides of the drawer frames. Once the mortises are all cut in the legs and the dadoes in the side panels I can start cutting the tenons for the drawer rails then I can start on the mortises and tenons for the drawer frames, but that has to be left for next weekend.

"It is not how much one makes but to what purpose one spends."

John Ruskin